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THE MOGUL EMPERORS 




«J%«f &/ 






THE 



MOGUL EMPERORS OF 
HINDUSTAN 



A.D. I398-A.D. 1707 



,BY 

EDWARD S.^HOLDEN, LL.D. 



Often an action of small note, a short saying or a j'cst^ 
shall distinguish a person's real character more than 
the greatest sieges. — Plutarch. 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 




y-a^f 



A~ li/ASVi\«^'^3^ 



COPYKIGHT, 1895, BY 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



>^ 



>V-" 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

A COLLECTION of miniatures of the Mogul 
emperors, some of which are copied in this 
book, came into my hands many months ago. 
The accounts of these unfamiHar personages 
which are given in the ordinary books of 
reference I found to be inadequate and fre- 
quently incorrect. Accordingly, I devoted 
the spare hours of a long and harassing win- 
ter to reading the original memoirs of the 
native historians of India and the accounts 
of early ambassadors and travellers to the 
court of the Great Moguls. A few of these 
I wrote out in brief, and they were printed 
in various periodicals. I have been asked to 
reprint them in a more complete form, which 
I am very glad to do, as I know of no one 
volume which contains the information here 
collected. 

To those who have lived or travelled in 
India, the subject of this book will be more 



vi Introductory Note 

or less familiar, since the jurisprudence, cus- 
toms, and architecture of the Mogul em- 
perors have left remains which still serve to 
recall their authors. Yet I think that even 
this class of readers may find it convenient 
to have many scattered fragments of biog- 
raphy and history brought together in one 
place. To the majority of persons, however, 
the Mogul period is a closed one ; it is hardly 
more than a name ; its impulses are alien, 
its note is foreign, and its history seems 
remote. But even to us, who are so far re- 
moved in time and in temper, it is not with- 
out interest to study the characters of the 
kings who ruled India for three eventful 
centuries ; and it is chiefly to the latter class 
of readers that this book is addressed. 

I wish to emphasize the fact that its chap- 
ters are not intended to give the history of the 
reigns in question, but rather to present such 
views of the chief personages involved as an 
intelligent reader of the histories themselves 
might wish to carry away. The materials 
which I have used are to be found in all 
great libraries, although they are dispersed in 



IntrodtLctory Note vll 

very many different volumes. Moreover, the 
writings of Oriental biographers require to 
be worked over into a new shape before 
they are acceptable to Western readers. 

I have not encumbered these pages with 
the host of foot-notes which would be neces- 
sary had I referred by work, volume, and 
page to their sources. It may suffice to say 
that the chief authorities consulted have 
been the Memoirs of the emperors them- 
selves ; the standard histories of Persia, 
India, and Tartary, by Elphinstone, Malcolm, 
Erskine, Price, Hunter, Howorth, and others; 
the records of early missions and voyages ; 
and, more especially, the invaluable transla- 
tions of the native historians, by Sir Henry 
Elliot, Professor Dowson, and Professor 
Blochmann ; in short, all the works that I 
was able to find which treat of the subject 
in hand. 

The very interesting lives of Akbar, by 
Colonel Malleson and Comte F. A. de 
Noer, and of Aurangzeb, by Mr. Stanley 
Lane- Poole, came into my hands after this 
book was finished. I have carefully com- 



vill Introductory Note 

pared Chapters IV and VII with these, the 
latest authorities, but I have seen nothing 
to change. As a matter of fact, all histories 
of the Moguls must depend upon the same 
originals. The interpretation of these origi- 
nals rests with the reader. I have attempted 
to present them so fully as to make the 
interpretation easy. Whenever it was pos- 
sible, I have used the very words of the 
various chronicles ; and this must be my 
excuse for some inconsistencies in spelling, 
etc. I have also chosen to retain the spell- 
ing of the word Mogul, which a usage of 
more than two centuries has made familiar 
to English readers, rather than to introduce 
the more correct form, Mughal. 

I count myself particularly fortunate in 
that I have the permission of Sir William 
Hunter to reprint (in Chapter VIII) his 
masterly picture of the downfall of the last 
of the great Mogul emperors. 

I have been able to find nearly all the 
original authorities for this book in the 
libraries of the Pacific Coast, which seems 
to be not a little remarkable when it is 



Introductory Note ix 

considered how far removed our American 
interests, literary and otherwise, are from 
those of India, especially of mediaeval In- 
dia. Other works I have consulted by the 
courtesy of Dr. Justin Winsor, Librarian of 
Harvard University. 

There was every reason to expect that no 
complete series of entirely authentic por- 
traits of the Mogul emperors could be 
obtained. So far as I have been able to 
discover, there is no such series in America. 
By the liberal action of the authorities of 
the British Museum, and through the very 
kind offices of Dr. Richard Garnett, keeper 
of its printed books, and of Professor 
Robert K. Douglas, keeper of Oriental 
Mss., I received permission to copy the 
portraits of the Mogul kings from a col- 
lection of rare and exquisite Indian draw- 
ings by contemporary artists, which consti- 
tutes one of its many treasures. The group 
of four emperors — Babar, Humayun, Akbar, 
Jal angir — which is given at the beginning 
of Chapter II, is reproduced from a Ms. 
of the Shah-Jaha7i-Nameh (British Museum 



X Introductory Note 

Add., 20,734), which was formerly in the 
possession of Akbar III, King of Delhi. 
The portrait of Shah Jahan as an old man 
(page 270), and of Aurangzeb (page 309), 
are from Ms. Add., 18,801. 

These plates were kindly selected for me 
by Mr. H. Arthur Doubleday of London, 
publisher to the India Office, who also was 
good enough to superintend their photo- 
graphic reproduction from the original Mss. 
The portraits are entirely authentic ; with 
one exception they have never before been 
printed ; indeed, their existence was only 
known to a few Oriental scholars ; and they 
have the additional advantage of exhibiting 
Indian portraiture at its best, in everything 
but color. 

The frontispiece of this book, from an 
exquisite miniature on ivory, is a copy of 
a picture given to my son by Sir Edwin 
Arnold. The plate of Akbar, Nur-Mahal, 
and Shah Jahan (as a young man) is repro- 
duced from other miniatures in my collec- 
tion. They purport to be copies of original 
portraits. How faithfully, even slavishly, 



Introductory Note xi. 

such originals are copied and recopied I have 
learned by comparing two photographs of 
Nur-Mahal in my possession. One of these 
is after a miniature now in London, the other 
after a miniature now in Delhi. The two 
miniatures were copied from the same orig- 
inal. The closest scrutiny fails to detect 
any difference whatever in any part of the 
two photographs. The very pattern of a 
rug is absolutely identical in the two copies 
of copies. Hence it is that one comes to 
have confidence in such reproductions by 
Indian artists. The spirited design of two 
Asiatic warriors used as a stamp on the 
cover, is after a Persian painting of the time 
of Marco Polo, circa a.d. 1300, and it is 
reproduced from Colonel Yule's remarkable 
life of the great traveller. 

The portrait of Nur-Mahal (Nur-Jahan) 
at the beginning of Chapter VI, is copied 
from an engrav'ng which bears the title 
" Noor Jehan, or the Light of the World, 
after an original drawing from the library 
of the Great Mogul, and now in the pos- 
session of the Publishers," which is further 



xii Introductory Note 

marked "P. 185." I do not know to what 
work this belongs, but this rare portrait is 
evidently a faithful copy of some Indian 
original, and is extremely interesting. 

The view of the tomb of Tamerlane, in 
Samarkand, is redrawn from a photograph 
which I owe to the kindness of Professor 
D. Gedeonof, Director of the Observatory of 
Tashkend. From Rousselet's India and its 
Native Princes the following cuts are taken 
(by permission of the publishers) : The 
Tomb of Humayun, the Mosque of Aurang- 
zeb at Benares. The view of the Taj-Mahal 
is made from a negative by Mr. Frederick 
DIodati Thompson of New York, and first 
appeared in his book, In the Track of the 
Sun. It is printed by permission of Messrs. 
D. Appleton & Co. These characteristic 
views of famous buildings illustrate the prog- 
ress (and decay) of Mogul architecture from 
the time of Tamerlane (1400) to the reign of 
Aurangzeb (1700). Finally, the drawing of 
the lotus (page 365) is reduced from a native 
Indian picture, in colors, in the collection of 
Miss Olive Risley-Seward of Washington. 



Introductory Note xiii 

Professor Gedeonof, Director of the Imperial 
Observatory of Tashkend, Professor C. Michie 
Smith, Director of the Observatory of Madras, 
Mr. Thomas G. Allen of New Jersey, and, 
especially, Mr. H. Arthur Doubleday of Lon- 
don, have been most kind in procuring for 
me miniatures and photographic copies of 
portraits and views. I have to express my 
grateful thanks to Miss Agnes Gierke for 
researches made in the collections of the 
British Museum, and to Miss Sara Garr 
Upton for similar researches made in the 
Library of Gongress and elsewhere. 

Through the thoughtful kindness of many 
friends in many parts of the world it has 
thus been possible to collect in this one 
volume illustrations of the personages and 
of the architecture of the India of long ago. 
I beg to express my sincere obligations to 
them all ; and also to .ny publishers for the 
pains they have taken to present the illustra- 
tions in a fitting and artistic manner. 

A mere chance originally drew my atten- 
tion to the subject of this book ; the leisure 
hours of a long winter were given to the 



xiv Introdtidory Note 

study of the writings and characters of great 
rulers and great men like Babar and Akbar. 
If I have succeeded in conveying the impres- 
sions which I received, I shall be more than 
gratified. 

E. S. H. 
The Lick Observatory, 

Mount Hamilton, April, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
Tamerlane the Great (born a.d. 1336, died 

A.D. 1405), .1 

CHAPTER II. 

Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar, the Con- 
queror (born a.d. 1482, died 1530), . 56 

CHAPTER III. 

HuMAYUN, Emperor of Hindustan (a.d. 1530- 
1556) ; THE Adventures of Four Broth- 
ers, . '• 97 

CHAPTER IV. 

Shah Akbar the Great, the Organizer, 
Emperor of Hindustan (a.d, 1556- 
1605), 128 

CHAPTER V. 

The Emperor Jahangir (a.d. 1605-1627). A 
Contribution towards a Natural His- 
tory OF Tyrants, ..... 207 



xvi Table of Contents 

CHAPTER VI. 

Nur-Mahal (The Light of the Palace), 

Empress of Hindustan (a.d. 1611-1627), 236 

CHAPTER VII. 

Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, Emperors of 
Hindustan (a.d. 162-8-1658 and a.d. 
1658-1707), 270 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Ruin of Aurangzeb ; or, the History 

of a Reaction. By Sir W. W. Hunter, 309 

CHAPTER IX. 
Appendix. The Conquests of India (b.c. 327- 
A.D. 1526). Brief Chronological and 
Genealogical Tables, (a.d. 1398-1707), 357 



CORRIGENDA 

Frontispiece; for 1631 read 1630. 

Page X., line 2 ; for Akbar III. read Akbar II. 

Page xii., line 3 ; for page 365 read page 356. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Emperor Babar, 
The Emperor Humayun, 
The Emperor Akbar, 
The Emperor Jahangir, 
The Empress Nur-Mahal, 



BORN DIED 
(1482-I530) 

(1508-I556) 

(1542-I605) 

(1569-I627) 

(1585-I645) 



FACING 
PAGE 

56 
56 

128 

56 

128 
236 



The Empress Mumtaz-i-Mahal, (1590-1630) 

Frontispiece 



The Emperor Shah Jahan, . (1591-1666) 

The Emperor Aurangzeb, . (1618-1707) 

The Tomb of Timur at Samarkand, .' 

The Tomb of Humayun, 

The Taj-Mahal, at Agra, 

The Mosque of Aurangzeb, at Benares, 

The Lotus, 



128 
270 

309 

10 

97 

289 

302 

Tailpiece 



THE MOGUL EMPERORS 
OF HINDUSTAN 

CHAPTER I 

TAMERLANE THE GREAT 
(born A.D. 1336, DIED 1405) 

The Inhabitants of a small Italian city 
became the rulers of the world from the 
Euphrates to the cliffs of Albion. We are 
the inheritors of their civilization, and their 
history is taught to our little children. Their 
language and literature are as familiar as 
our own. The lives of their rulers and 
great men are part of the common stock 
of knowledge. We understand their char- 
acters, their aspirations, their most secret 
motives. 

Centuries after Rome was famous the 



2 The Mogul Emperors 

hordes of Tartar and Mongol tribes in the 
far East gathered strength under great com- 
manders, and overran what they also called 
" the inhabitable world," from Poland to the 
Persian Gulf and Hindustan ; from Constan- 
tinople to the China Sea ; from Corea to the 
J Ganges. . Their descendants founded a stable 

^ empire in India, which lasted until our own 

day. What living idea can we form of such 
alien personalities as those of Chengiz-Khan, 
of Tamerlane, or of their great successors, 
Babar and Akbar ? Shakspeare's play of 
Julius CcBsar might serve as a first text-book 
of Roman history in our schools to-day. 
Marlowe's scarcely less famous TmnburlaiJie 
is ludicrously inadequate as a picture of the 
Grand Khan of Tartary. 

These people have never yet touched our 
national or our racial life. They are utter 
foreigners. We can understand the Moors 
in Spain ; and the chivalric Saladin is hardly 
stranger to us than Richard the Lion-Heart, 
or Saint Louis of France. But our interest 
in the Mongols is a mere intellectual inquisi- 
tiveness. If one seeks to satisfy this curios- 



Tamerlajie the Great 3 

ity, one meets with singular difficulties. Not 
only are the character and motives of particu- 
lar individuals quite alien to our own, but 
their very histories are given in foreign forms 
which perplex and confuse. It is perfectly 
simple to understand that Ulugh Beg, the 
grandson of Tamerlane, built in 1437, at 
Samarkand, the greatest astronomical observ- 
atory of the world, one hundred and forty 
years before Tycho Brahe erected Urani- 
bourg in Denmark. But it is almost im- 
possible to comprehend the intrigues and 
violence which deposed this good prince, and 
led to his death at the hands of his own son. 
As in this case, so in others. A consecutive 
history, by a native writer, of the reigns of 
Chengiz or of Timur (Tamerlane, '* the lame 
prince "), seems totally unconnected and illog- 
ical. Its sanguinary pages record a hell 
which seems to be purposeless — without an 
object. 

If we wish to satisfy the curiosity to know 
something, at least, of the character and mo- 
tives of a sovereign like Timur, the simplest 
process is to collect the narratives of men of 



4 The Mogul Emperors 

our own world who were eye-witnesses of his 
actions. These recitals give us the perspec- 
tive outlines, which are intelligible even if 
they are not complete. The details of the 
sketch must be filled up by extracts from the 
native writers, and we have to choose such as 
seem to us significant. Finally, it may be 
possible, though difficult, to fit this picture 
into its place in the view of the world which 
we have inherited from our Roman ances- 
tors and adopted for ourselves ; and it is of 
the first importance to recollect that Rome 
was nearly two thousand years old when 
Mongol history begins. 



An Embassy to the Grand Khan of Tar tar y 
(a.d. 1254) 

In the year 1248 Saint Louis of France 
embarked for the Holy Land. While he was 
yet at Cyprus he received ambassadors from 
the Grand Khan of Tartary, and understood, 
quite erroneously, that the Khan had been 
converted to Christianity. It seems to be 



Tamerlane the Great 5 

true that he desired to attack the Saracens 
from one side, while the Crusaders advanced 
from the other. From Syria the King sent 
one Wilham de Rubruquis, a monk of the 
order of the Friars Minors, as a sort of 
ambassador to Tartary. His real mission 
was to spy out the land, and to make such 
converts as he could. De Rubruquis was 
" a person of admirable parts, great dili- 
gence, unaffected piety and probity." His 
letter to the King, giving an account of his 
extraordinary journey, fully bears out this 
praise and deserves to be read in full. De 
Rubruquis left Constantinople for Tartary 
in May, 1253, and arrived at the court of 
Batu, the grandson of Chengiz-Khan (born 
1162, died 1227), after months of perilous 
travel. 

The subjects of Tamerlane were very like 
those of Chengiz-Khan. The acceptance of 
Islam was the only marked change, and the 
new religion was held but lightly. There is 
no better way to obtain a view of them than 
to copy a few paragraphs from the journal of 
the good monk : 



6 TJic Mog7il Emperors 

" And after we departed out of those pre- 
cincts we found the Tartars, amongst whom 
beine entered, methouoht I was come into a 
new world, whose life and manners I will 
describe unto your Highness as well as I can. 
They have no settled habitation ; neither 
know they to-day where they shall lodge 
to-morrow. They have all Scythia to them- 
selves, which stretcheth from the river Dan- 
ube to the utmost extent of the East. Each 
of their Captains, according to the number 
of his people, knows the bounds of his pas- 
tures, and where he ought to feed his cattle, 
winter and summer, spring and autumn. 
Their houses they raise upon a round founda- 
tion of wickers, artificially wrought and com- 
pacted together ; the roof, consisting of 
wickers also, meeting above in one little 
roundell, which they cover with white (or 
black) felt. This cupola they adorn with 
variety of pictures." 

The houses were moved from place to 
place on immense wagons twenty feet wide, 
drawn by two-and-twenty oxen in two rows, 
eleven in a row. " The axle-tree of the cart 



Tamerlane the Great 7 

was of a huge bigness, like the mast of a 
ship. Batu (grandson of Chengiz-Khan) 
hath sixteen wives, every one of whom hath 
a great house. Hence it is that the court 
of a rich Tartar will appear like a very large 
village." 

At the camps the houses were dismounted 
from the carts and ranged in order. The 
beds and furniture had particular and un- 
varying situations within the house. " There 
is a little lean idol which is, as it were, the 
guardian of the whole house. One piece of 
ceremony is constant in all houses ; namely, 
a bench, on which stands a vessel of milk 
and cups for drinking it. In the summer- 
time they care not for any drink but cosmos/' 

"In respect to their food, give me leave 
to inform your Highness that, without differ- 
ence or distinction, they eat all their beasts 
that die of age or sickness." 

The customs and the laws of the Tartars 
are described at great length. The chie-f 
punishments are flogging and death. 

" On my arrival among these barbarous 

* Mares' milk — koumiss. 



8 The Mogul Emperors 

people I thought, as I before observed, that 
I was come into a new world. The first 
question they asked was whether we had 
ever been with them heretofore or not ; and 
made us wait a long while, begging our 
bread from us, wondering at all things they 
saw, and desiring to have them. It is true 
they took nothing by force from me, but 
they will beg all they see, very importunately ; 
and if a man bestows anything upon them it 
is but lost, for they are thankless wretches. 
So we departed from them ; and indeed it 
seemed to me that we escaped out of the 
hands of devils." 

On his journey he was presented to Zaga- 
tai, another grandson of Chengiz-Khan, and 
entered into his presence "with fear and 
bashfulness." The reception was not unfa- 
vorable, though the monk's gifts were few. 

" I expounded to him the Apostles' Creed, 
which, after he had heard, he shook his head." 
The interpreter, however, was " a sorry one." 

They still " went towards the eastward, see- 
ing naught but the sky and the earth," till 
they reached their journey's end. At the 



Tamerlane the Great 9 

court of the Khan they found a kind of com- 
fort ; even luxury of a sort. What is most 
surprising, they met with Nestorian and Jac- 
obite priests in numbers ; with fugitive Rus- 
sians, Greeks, Hungarians, Muhammadans, 
in plenty ; a Knight Templar, a French gold- 
smith, William Bouchier of Paris, and his 
wife, "■ a woman from Metz in Lorraine," and 
even with a strayed Englishman. This was 
more than a hundred years before the time 
of Timur, and it affords an explanation of the 
variety of arts known in Samarkand in his 
reign. The Tartar and Mongol tribesmen 
were still the same in his time, except for a 
nominal conformity to Islam. Christianity 
had been brought to Khorassan in the fourth 
century by the Nestorians. There was a 
Nestorian bishop in Merv in a.d. 334, and in 
Herat and Samarkand in a.d. 500. The 
Kerait Turkomans accepted Christianity 
about A.D. 1000, as a tribe. Buddhism came 
through China into Transoxania ; and Islam 
crossed the Persian frontiers not long after 
the death of the Prophet. All these creeds 
were tolerated by Chengiz Khan. 



lO The Mogul Emperors 

The tolerance of Chengiz and his sons had 
ceased under Timur, and the M^sHm mollahs 
ruled in all religious matters. (But the arts 
of the architect, the goldsmith, the armorer, 
the weaver, had already been transplanted 
to these wilds from Europe, from China, 
from Africa, from Arabia, from Persia. As- 
tronomy, mathematics, poetry, learning of a 
sort were cultivated, and the held was pre- 
pared for that remarkable advance in some 
of the arts (notably in architecture), which 
marks the period of Timur and his imme- 
diate successors.'^ 

An Embassy to Tamerlane the Great 
(a.d. 1403) 

King Henry III. of Castile (a.d. 1376- 
1407) despatched embassies to many princes 
of Europe and Asia. Tamerlane sent in re- 
turn an envoy, Muhammad-al-Cazi, with pres- 
ents and a letter. When the Mogul envoy 

*For a very interesting description of the fine monuments of 
Samarkand in Timur's lifetime, see an article by M. Edouard 
Blanc in the Revue des Deux Mondes for February 15, 1893. 




THE TOMB OF TIMUR 



Tameidane the Great 1 1 

was to return, the King of Castile sent with 
him an embassy to the court of Timur Beg. 
Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, one of the envoys, 
has left us an account of his perilous mission, 
which set out from Seville in May, 1403, and 
arrived at Samarkand in August, 1404, after 
traversing the Mediterranean and Euxine seas 
to Trebizond, and passing by land through 
Erzeroum, Teheran, near Merv, and across the 
Oxus to Samarkand — over seventy degrees of 
longitude. 

In October, 1403, the ambassadors were 
received in audience by Manuel, the Emperor 
of Constantinople ; and as they much desired 
to have a sight of the various Christian relics 
for which the churches of the city * were 
famous, special privileges were granted to 
them. The son-in-law of the Emperor acted 
as their guide in their pious visits. The 
Emperor himself was the custodian of the 
keys to the reliquaries. In the church of 
St. John the Baptist they saw the " left arm 
of St. John. This arm was withered so that 
the skin and bone alone remained, and the 

* There were three thousand churches. 



12 The Mogul Emperors 

joints of the elbow and the hand were 
adorned with jewels." In another church 
they saw the saint's right arm, '* and this was 
fresh and healthy." " And though they say 
that the whole body of the blessed St. John 
was destroyed except one finger, with which 
he pointed when he said, ' Ecce Agnus Dei T 
yet certainly the whole of this arm was in 
good preservation." "^ In various shrines they 
saw pieces of the true cross, made from the 
cross which the blessed St. Helena brought 
(entire) from the Holy Land; "the grid- 
iron on which the blessed St. Lawrence was 
roasted ; " the very '' bread which our Lord 
Jesus Christ gave to Judas ; " some of "the 
blood of Christ ; " some hairs of the Saviour's 
beard ; the iron of the lance with which Lon- 
ginus pierced his side, " and the blood on it 
was as fresh as if the deed had just been 
committed ; " "a piece of the sponge with 
which Jesus Christ, our God, was given gall 
and vinegar when he was on the cross," and 
his garments for which the soldiers cast lots, 

* Notre Dame d'Amiens claims to possess the face bones of the 
Saint to this day. 



Tamerlane the Great 13 

besides relics of saints beyond count. On 
a stone of many colors were the " tears of 
the three Marys and of St. John, and these 
tears looked fresh, as if they had just fallen." 
At Trebizond, on the Black Sea, they had 
already touched on the confines of Timur's 
dominions, for the prince of that place paid 
tribute to the Emperor. " The arms which 
Timur Beg bears," says Clavijo, "are three 
circles like O's, drawn in this manner, *o°, and 
this is to signify that he is lord of the three 
parts of the world. He ordered this device 
to be stamped on his coins, and that those 
who are tributary to him shall have it stamped 
on the coins of their countries." It was of 
the greatest benefit to the Spanish envoys to 
travel in the company of Timur's own ambas- 
sador. After many adventures they reached 
Teheran, and from here to Samarkand they 
were forwarded by post-horses, which were 
maintained by the Emperor on all the prin- 
cipal routes ; and they were entertained and 
cared for by the governors of towns and 
villages. Their journey through Persia was 
in the heats of July, and many of the party 



14 The Mogul Emperors 

succumbed and died, what with the heat, the 
dust, the lack of water, and the great pace at 
which their post-horses travelled ; for Timur 
" is better pleased with him who travels a day 
and a night for fifty leagues, and kills two 
horses, than with him who does the distance 
in three days." 

" Timur, considering that the leagues 
were very long in his empire of Samarkand, 
divided each league into two, and placed 
small pillars on the road to mark each 
league, ordering all his followers to march 
at least ten of these leagues on each day's 
journey ; and each of these leagues was 
equal to two leagues of Castile. . . . 
And they do not only travel the distance 
which the lord has ordered, but sometimes 
fifteen or twenty leagues in a day and night." 

Fancy a whole kingdom in which each 
official is forced to travel at least sixty miles 
per day, whether he likes or not ! 

" When we arrived at any city or village, 
the first thing was to ask for the chief of the 
place ; and they took the first man they met 
in the street, and with many blows forced 



Tamerlane the Great 15 

him to show the house of the chief. The 
people who saw them coming, and knew they 
were the troops of Timur Beg, ran away as 
if the devil was after them ; and those who 
were behind their shops shut them up and 
fled, crying ' Elchee / ' which means ambassa- 
dor ; and saying that with the ambassadors 
there would come a black day for them." 

And, in fact, the villagers had to furnish 
all that the travellers required, and if anyone 
failed he was killed, or, at the least, beaten ; 
"and thus it was that the people were in 
marvellous terror of the lord and of his 
servants." 

" With these people Timur has performed 
many deeds and conquered in many battles ; 
for they are a people of great valor, excel- 
lent horsemen, expert with the bow, and 
enured to hardships. If they have food, 
they eat ; and if not, they suffer cold and 
heat, hunger and thirst, better than any peo- 
ple in the world. . . . They do not 
leave their women, children, and flocks be- 
hind when they go to the wars, but take 
all with them." 



1 6 The Mogul Emperors 

They are, says a writer quoted by Vam- 
bery, " a people who weep at their feasts, but 
laugh in their battles, who follow their leader 
blindly, are content with cold and hunger, do 
not know rest or pleasure, have not even 
words to express them in their language. 
They prepare and carry their own arms, are 
animated by one soul and one spirit, not 
dainty in food or clothes, unpitying, ready to 
tear the unborn child from its mother." 

They despised the life of towns, and held 
agriculture fit for slaves. They were not 
willing to subsist on " the top of a weed," as 
they called wheat. Since the time of Chen- 
giz-Khan, every soldier had his appointed 
place in war — in the right wing, the left wing, 
or the centre ; and these places were handed 
down from father to son. 

" We met many of them, and they were 
so burned by the sun that they looked as if 
they had come out of hell." 

On the 31st of August, 1404, the ambassa- 
dors reached the neighborhood of Samar- 
kand. They were kept waiting for eight 
days before they had audience ; " for it is the 



Tamerlajie the Great 17 

custom not to see any ambassador until five 
or six days are passed, and the more impor- 
tant the ambassador may be, the longer he has 
to wait." Finally they were presented. 

'' Timur Beg was seated in a portal, at 
the entrance to a beautiful palace, and he 
was sitting on the ground. Before him there 
was a fountain, which threw up the water 
very high, and in it were some red apples. 
The lord was seated cross-legged, on silken 
embroidered carpets, amongst round pillows. 
He was dressed in a robe of silk, with a high 
white hat on his head, on the top of which 
was a ruby, with pearls and precious stones 
about it." 

They were very well received, and given 
an honorable place above the ambassador 
from China. Timur asked after the King 
of Spain. "How is my son, the King? 
These Franks are truly a great people, and 
I will give my benediction to the King of 
Spain, my son, who lives at the end of the 
world." Here, then, at the court of Timur, 
were met ambassadors from the two extremi- 
ties of the habitable globe — China and Spain. 



1 8 The Mogul E?nperors 

Banquets followed, with profusion of 
meats, boiled and roasted, and with fruits 
of all kinds, and drink out of golden jugs ; 
and later on drinking-bouts at which the 
Emperor's wives were present, unveiled. 
These took place under magnificent tents of 
silk, embroidered with gold and gems. 

" There were gold tables, each standing 
on four legs, and the tables and legs were all 
in one. And seven golden vials stood upon 
them, two of which were set with large 
pearls, emeralds, and turquoises, and each 
one had a ruby near the mouth. There 
were also six round golden cups — one set 
with large pearls inside, and in the centre of 
it was a ruby two fingers broad, and of a 
brilliant hue." 

Their interpreter was late in bringing 
them to this feast, and Timur was very 
angry. 

" How is it that you have caused me to be 
enraged and put out ? Why were you not 
with the Frank Ambassador ? I order that 
a hole be bored through your nose ; that a 
rope be passed through it, and that you be 



Tamerlane the Great 19 

dragged through the army, as a punish- 
ment." 

" He had scarcely finished speaking, when 
men took the interpreter by the nose to bore 
a hole in it." 

It is satisfactory to know that the wretch 
escaped by the intercession of the officer 
who attended on the Spanish envoys. As 
they had not eaten freely, the Emperor 
sent to their lodgings "ten sheep and a 
horse to eat, and also a load of wine, and 
dressed the ambassadors in robes, and gave 
them shirts and hats." 

There was great feasting, for some of 
Timur's grandsons were to be married ; and 
another grandson, Pir Muhammad, ruler of 
India, was present. The profusion and 
magnificence of these feasts impressed the 
ambassadors, and they seem to have been 
chiefly struck with the splendid tents and 
pavilions of silk, built like castles, each with 
a multitude of rooms. 

/Timur's chief wife was present in " a robe 
oifed silk, trimmed with gold lace, long and 
flowing. It had no waist, and fifteen ladies 



20 The Mogul Emperors 

held up the skirts of it to enable her to 
walk. She wore a crested headdress of red 
cloth, very high, covered with large pearls, 
rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, 
and embroidered with gold lace. On the top 
of all there was a little castle, on which were 
three very large and brilliant rubies, sur- 
mounted by a tall plume of feathers. . . . 
Her hair, which was very black, hung down 
over her shoulders ; and they value black hair 
much more than any other color. She was 
accompanied by three hundred ladies," and 
when she sat down " three ladies held her 
headdress with their hands, that it might not 
fall on one side." The other wives were 
no less gorgeously arrayed. ) 

" On this day they had much enter- 
tainment with the [fourteen] elephants, 
making them run with horses and with the 
people, which was very diverting ; and when 
they all ran together it seemed as if the 
earth trembled. ... In this horde which 
the lord had assembled there were as many 
as fourteen or fifteen thousand tents, which 
was a beautiful thing to see." 



Tamerlane the Great 21 

So with {castings every day the mission 
was entertained, and was finally dismissed 
with honorable presents. The ambassadors 
returned over nearly the same route by 
which they had come, and arrived at the 
Spanish court on the 24th day of March, 
1406, after an absence of about three years. 

Their narrative is valuable, in that it gives 
a truthful though a dull picture of the court 
of the great warrior King. It is at the same 
time most' disappointing, in that we fail to 
gain that vivid, life-like impression of his 
personality which they might have given. 
Perhaps the most striking idea to be ob- 
tained from it is that the intellectual superi- 
ority of the envoys to the Moguls (which 
we unthinkingly and at once assume) is 
less marked than one might have expected. 
Timur's officers do not seem especially rude 
and ignorant as compared with the Spanish 
gentlemen. Timur's court was not a mere 
assembly of his officials. It was organized 
in a fashion as orderly as that of the Spanish 
King. Special ranks had special privileges. 
A Tarkhan, for example, had les grandes 



2 2 The Mogul Binpei'ors 

entrees; the mace-bearers could not stop 
him. A more extraordinary accompaniment 
of this rank was that neither he nor his chil- 
dren could be called to account till their 
crimes exceeded nine in number; and the 
title was hereditary. Timur himself was a 
far more important figure than any of his 
Western contemporaries. To complete our 
view of him, it is necessary to consult the 
narratives of the native historians of India 
and his own Memoirs. And in these native 
histories we may leave out of consideration 
any consecutive account of the mere events 
of his reign. These events were a long suc- 
cession of bloody razzias on a large scale, all 
alike in the main. When one is understood, 
all are. 

The Life of Timttr, as Told by the Native 
Historians 

The native historians and poets have 
handed down to us some accounts of the 
actions and sayings of Chengiz-Khan which 
accurately describe the military life of Timur. 
Of Chengiz it is said in verse : 



Tamerlane the Great 23 

In every direction that he urged his steed 
He raised dust commingled with blood. 

Here is Chengiz's letter demanding the 
treasure of Bokhara. It might have been 
written by Timur to the chief men of any 
one of his conquered cities, just at that fear- 
ful moment when his soldiery were driving 
the inhabitants like sheep into the surround- 
ing plains till the walls were emptied, and 
just before the sacking of the town began. 
The letter concludes thus : " O men of 
Bokhara ! You have been guilty of enor- 
mous crimes ; hence the wrath of God, of 
whose vengeance I am the instrument, hath 
employed me against you. Of all the prop- 
erty in this city which is visible, it would 
be needless to require an account. What 
I demand is the immediate surrender of all 
that is concealed." 

The trembling chiefs reveal the sites of 
the hidden treasures ; the soldiers loot and 
plunder ; the wretched populace is herded 
in the fields ; in a few days the number of 
prisoners becomes troublesome ; the artisans 
and the men of learning are segregated from 



24 The Mogul Emperors 

the rest, and are despatched to people some 
one of the conqueror's cities — to Kesh or 
Samarkand; the despairing remnant is divided 
into tens or twenties, and a Mogul warrior is 
told off to slaughter them, and to produce at 
nightfall ten or twenty heads to go towards 
the building of a horrid monument to com- 
memorate the butchery. After the conquest 
of Bagdad, one hundred and twenty such 
pyramids of heads were built. Sometimes 
they were made by Timur's " engineers," by 
building the whole body of the victims into 
the structure with brick and clay and mor- 
tar. Two thousand prisoners, not all dead, 
were the materials of one such monu- 
ment. 

When a city was sacked, the walls were 
usually levelled to the ground and grain was 
sowed on the site. The tombs of the saints 
were spared, and were often embellished and 
enlarged. The infidels who denied the unity 
of God and the legation of his prophet were 
almost invariably slain unless they were 
artisans. " Half of the garrison had their 
throats cut ; the other half were hurled head- 



Tamerlane the Great 25 

long from the battlements," is one entry of 
Timur's diary. 

After Chengiz-Khan had captured Bokhara 
the history of his conquest was given in a 
line by one of the sufferers : " The Mongols 
came, destroyed, burnt, slaughtered, plun- 
dered, and departed." The history of Timur's 
raids is written in that one sentence. They 
were all alike. 

Here is Timur's own account of a massacre 
in 1387, which was commemorated by the 
building of ']0,(j00 human heads into a pyra- 
mid plastered with mud : 

" I conquered the city of Isfahan, and I 
trusted in the people of Isfahan, and I deliv- 
ered the castle into their hands. And they 
rebelled, and they slew three thousand of the 
soldiers. And I also commanded a general 
slaughter of the people of Isfahan." 

The condition of an invaded province is 
described by an earlier writer : " There were 
many who withered with fear, and a mutter- 
ing arose, as of a drum beaten under a 
blanket." 

Timur's expedition to India was undoubt- 



26 The Mogtil Emperors 

edly inspired by the hope of plunder. But 
his Memoirs ('* his lying Memoirs," as an 
English commentator calls them) declare that 
he was impelled to this invasion in order 
to obtain the title ghazi, victor of infidels 
and polytheists. He sought counsel of his 
princes and nobles in the matter. Some 
urged the invasion for one reason, some for 
another. Prince Muhammad Sultan favored 
it on account of the "seventeen" mines 
situated in India. One of these was a mine 
of gold, another of iron, and the last " a 
mine of steel." 

Timur's conquest of India laid the founda- 
tions of the Mogul Empire, and it is impor- 
tant for that reason chiefly. In its incidents 
it was a mere raid on an immense scale, like so 
many of his other campaigns. He passed 
the Hindu Kush Mountains in the spring of 
A.D. 1398, and in December he was pro- 
claimed Emperor of Delhi. His path was 
marked by slaughter and ravage, and for five 
days Delhi itself was given over to pillage. 
Fifteen days he remained within its walls, 
and by March, 1399, he had crossed the bor- 



Tamerlane the Great 27 

ders of India once more, on his way to sub- 
due the Sultan of Turkey, Bajazet, who died 
a captive in his camp. 

While Timur lived the official prayers at 
Delhi were recited in his name, and at his 
death in the name of his son. 

Durinof Timur's march into India more 
than one hundred thousand Hindu prisoners 
had fallen into his hands, and it was feared 
that they might turn against their captors, 
to whom they were, at any rate, a serious 
embarrassment. Timur was advised to put 
the prisoners to death. "He listened to this 
considerate and wise advice, and gave orders " 
to that effect. And accordingly they were 
all slain "■ with the sword of holy war." The 
butchers must have been weary of the slaugh- 
ter, for it is related that even " one of the 
chief ecclesiastics, who in all his life had 
never even slaughtered a sheep, put fifteen 
Hindus to the sword." 

These terrible and immense misfortunes 
produced in the afflicted nations a universal 
belief that this was the scourge of God. The 
fatalistic side of Islam exactly expresses this 



28 The Mogul Emperors 

state of acquiescence in overwhelming mis- 
fortune. The passage following might have 
been written of Timur, though, in fact, it 
refers to another : 

"At the time when the page of creation 
was blank, and nothing had yet taken form 
or shape, the Supreme Wisdom, with a view 
to preserve regularity and order in the world, 
fixed the destiny of each man, and deposited 
the key for unravelling each difficulty in the 
hands of an individual endowed with suitable 
talents. A time was fixed for everything, 
and when that time comes all obstacles are 
removed [from his career]." 

Though Timur has left Memoirs which are 
written as if by himself, they are probably 
the work of his officers, revised by the Em- 
peror. It is said that his secretaries recorded 
every important event, as is usual in the 
East, and that he caused their records to 
be read over to him, correcting them from 
moment to moment, either by his own recol- 
lections, or by the evidence of eye-witnesses 
to the scenes described. The Moguls of 
Timur's day used the alphabet introduced 



Tamerlane the Great 29 

by Nestorian missionaries. A century later 
the Emperor Babar invented a special char- 
acter for the Turki language. 

Timur traces his lineage to Abu-al-Atrak, 
— the " Father of the Turks," — the son of 
Japhet. The great-great-grandfather of 
Timur was the prime-minister (so to say) 
of Zagatai, son of Chengiz-Khan. The 
immaculate conception of Alan Koua, the 
common ancestress of Chengiz and of Timur, 
was an article of faith in his court. 

His father, Turghai, was the chief of the 
tribe of Berlas, and the ruler of the city of 
Kesh, where Timur was born. While he 
was still a young man, during his father's 
lifetime, he was a successful commander of 
1,000 men. After the death of his father 
and of his patron, Amir Kazghan of Trans- 
oxania, his fortunes were at a low ebb. He 
was obliged to fly to the desert for safety. 
He tells us that frequently he could com- 
mand no more than 100 followers, and very 
often he had but one or two. Still, he was 
always the chief of his tribe and there- 
fore important ; his adherents were brave, 



30 The Mogul Emperors 

of good birth, and enterprising. His own 
account of the rise in his fortunes gives a 
picture worth recording. 

" I had not yet rested from my devotions 
when a number of people appeared afar off ; 
and they were passing along in a line with 
the hill.''' I mounted my horse and came 
behind them, that I might know their condi- 
tion, and what men they were. They were in 
all seventy horsemen ; and I asked of them, 
saying, ' Warriors, who are ye ? ' and they 
answered unto me, ' We are the servants of 
Amir Timur, and we wander in search of 
him, and lo ! we find him not.' And I said, 
' I also am one of his servants. How say ye 
if I bring you where he is ? ' And one of 
them put his horse to speed, and carried 
news to the three leaders saying, ' We have 
found a guide who can lead us to Amir 
Timur.' The leaders gave orders [to bring 
the guide]. When their eyes fell upon me, 
they were overwhelnied with joy, and they 
alighted and they came, and they kneeled, 

* Note how he recollects the topography as if it were a real 
part of the incident, — just as the red Indians would do. 



Tamerlane the Great 31 

and they kissed my stirrup. I also alighted 
and took them in my arms. And I put my 
turban on the head of [one] ; and my girdle 
on [another] ; and I clothed [another] with 
my cloak. And they wept, and I wept also. 
When the hour of prayer was arrived, we 
prayed together; and I made a feast." 

This is very like the Iroquois. It might 
be Uncas and Chingacook. And after the 
feast they were all ready to harry, slay, burn, 
torture, to steal cattle, and to fight or run 
away, as served best. Such was his early 
fortune. 

" He was of good stature, fair complexion, 
an open countenance, and he had a shrill 
voice." His descendant, the Emperor Jahan- 
gir, tells us that there was no authentic por- 
trait of him in his time. A famous etching 
of Rembrandt's (No. 270) seems to me to 
express his character — force, patience, craft 
— exactly ; just as another of Rembrandt's 
etchings (No. 289) might serve for a portrait 
of Chengiz-Khan. It is almost certain that 
he was illiterate, and that his Memoirs are 
not written by his own hand, though undoubt- 



32 The Mogul Emperors 

edly they are often in his very words. One 
of his firmans was signed with the imprint of 
his hand in red ink. All of them might have 
been signed in blood. The famous anecdote 
of the ant does duty in a Persian life of 
Timur. " I was once forced," he says, " to 
take shelter from my enemies in a ruined 
building. To divert my mind from my hope- 
less condition, I fixed my eyes on an ant, 
which was carrying a grain of wheat up a 
high wall. Sixty-nine times it fell to the 
ground, but the insect persevered, and the 
seventieth time it reached the top. The 
sight gave me courage at the moment, and I 
never forgot the lesson." 

Early in his career (in 1370) Timur admit- 
ted Amir Seiyid Berrekah, the most distin- 
guished of the Prophet's descendants (Ali was 
his ancestor) into his camp, and restored to 
him the revenues devoted to the shrines and 
to religious uses. A friendship, which seems 
to have been warm and sincere, sprang up 
between the holy man and the warrior and 
endured till the death of the Seiyid. The 
cautious policy of Timur's earlier years may 



Tamerlane the Great 33 

have resulted from this companionship. His 
profuse professions of devotion to Islam are 
no doubt due to it. Timur was of the sect 
of Ali — a Shia. I have not been able to 
trace when his descendants assumed the 
Sunni faith; but Babar (1500) declares that 
in his time the inhabitants of Samarkand 
were all orthodox Sunnis. 

Timur s Maxims of Government 

Timur laid down twelve maxims of gov- 
ernment, and the following paragraphs are 
selected from this part of his institutes. No 
doubt these are also his very words in many 
cases. 

" Persons of wisdom and deliberation and 
vigilance and circumspection, and aged men 
endowed with knowledge and foresight, I ad- 
mitted to my private councils ; and I associ- 
ated with them, and I reaped benefit and 
acquired experience from their conversation. 
The soldier and the [civilian] subject I re- 
garded with the same eye. And such was 
the discipline among my troops and my 
3 



34 The Mogul Emperors 

subjects that the one was never injured or 
oppressed by the other." 

" From among the wise and prudent who 
merited trust and confidence, who were 
worthy of being consulted on the affairs of 
government, and to whose care I might sub- 
mit the secret concerns of my empire, I 
selected a certain number whom I consti- 
tuted the repositories of my secrets ; and my 
weighty and hidden transactions, and my 
secret thoughts and intentions I delivered 
over to them." 

" By the wazirs, and the secretaries, and 
the scribes, I gave order and regularity to 
my public councils ; I made them the keepers 
of the mirror of my government, in which 
they showed unto me the affairs of my 
empire and the concerns of my armies and 
my people ; and they kept rich my treasury ; 
and they secured plenty and prosperity to 
my soldiers and to my subjects ; and by 
proper and skilful measures they repaired 
the disorders incident to empire ; and they 
kept in order the revenues and the expenses 
of government ; and they exerted themselves 



Tamerlane the Great 35 

in promoting plenty and population through- 
out my dominions." 

" Men learned in medicine and skilled in 
the art of healing, and astrologers, and geo- 
metricians, who are essential to the dignity of 
empire, I drew around me ; and by the aid of 
physicians and surgeons I gave health to the 
sick ; and with the assistance of astrologers I 
ascertained the benign or malevolent aspect of 
the stars, their motions, and the revolution of 
the heavens ; and with the aid of geometricians 
and architects I laid out gardens, and planned 
and constructed magnificent buildings." 

" Historians and such as were possessed of 
information and intelligence I admitted to 
my presence ; and from these men I heard 
the lives of the prophets and patriarchs, and 
the histories of ancient princes, and the 
events by which they arrived at the dignity 
of empire, and the causes of the declension 
of their fortunes ; and from the narratives 
and the histories of those princes, and from 
the manners and conduct of each of them I 
acquired experience and knowledge ; and 
from those men I heard the descriptions and 



36 The Mogul E^npei^ors 

the traditions of the various regions of the 
globe, and acquired knowledge of the situa- 
tions of the kingdoms of the earth." 

** To travellers and to voyagers of every 
country I gave encouragement, that they 
might communicate unto me the intelli- 
gence and transactions of the surrounding 
nations ; and I appointed merchants and 
chiefs of caravans to travel to every king- 
dom and to every country that they might 
bring- unto me all sorts of valuable merchan- 
dise and rare curiosities from . . . Hindustan 
and from the cities of Arabia . . . and 
from the islands of the Christians, that they 
might give me information of the situation 
and of the manners and of the customs of 
the natives and inhabitants of those regions, 
and that they might observe and communi- 
cate unto me the conduct of the princes of 
every kingdom and every country towards 
their subjects." 

Timur's instructions for collecting the 
revenue are very full. The paragraphs fol- 
lowing will give an idea of their form. 

" And I commanded that the Amirs 



Tamerlane the Great 37 

. . . should not, on any account, demand 
more than the taxes and duties established. 
And to every province ... I ordained 
that two supervisors should be appointed; 
that one of them should inspect the collec- 
tions and watch Qver the concerns of the 
inhabitants, that they might not be impover- 
ished, and that the \over-lord^ might not ill- 
use or oppress them, . „ . and that the 
other supervisor should keep a register of 
the public expenses, and distribute the reve- 
nues among the soldiers." 

"■ And I ordained that the collection of the 
taxes from the subject might, when neces- 
sary, be enforced by menaces and by threats, 
but never by whips and by scourges. The 
governor whose authority is inferior to the 
power of the scourge is unworthy to govern. 
I ordained that the revenue and taxes should 
be collected in such a manner as might not 
be productive of ruin to the subject or of 
depopulation to the country." * 

* One-third of the gross produce of the cultivated land was 
the share of the government, and so remained under his descend- 
ants in India. 



^S The Mogul E?7tperors 

"And I ordained that if the rich and the 
powerful should oppress the poorer subject 
and injure or destroy his property, an equiva- 
lent for damage sustained should be levied 
upon the rich oppressor and be delivered to 
the injured person, that he might [thus] be 
restored to his former estate." 

" I appointed a Suddtir, a man of holiness 
and of illustrious dignity, to watch over the 
conduct of the Faithful ; that he might regu- 
late the manners of the times ; and appoint 
superiors in holy offices ; and establish in 
every city and in every town, a judge of 
penetration, and a doctor learned in the law, 
and a supervisor of the markets, of the 
weights and the measures." 

" And I established a judge for the army, 
and a judge for the subjects ; and I sent into 
every province and kingdom an instructor in 
the law, to deter the Faithful from those 
things which are forbidden and to lead them 
in the truth." 

" And I ordained that in every town and 
in every city there should be founded a 
mosque, and a school, and a monastery, and 



Tamer lajie the Great 39 

an alms-house for the poor and indigent, and 
a hospital for the sick and infirm, and that a 
physician should be appointed to attend the 
hospital ; and that in every city a govern- 
ment-house and a court for the administration 
of justice should be built ; and that superin- 
tendents should be appointed to watch over 
the cultivated lands, and over the husband- 
men." 

" And I commanded that they should build 
places of worship and monasteries in every 
city ; and that they should erect structures 
for the reception of travelers on the high 
roads and that they should make bridges 
across the rivers." 

" And I commanded that the ruined 
bridges should be repaired ; and that bridges 
should be constructed over the rivulets and 
over the rivers ; and that on the roads, at 
the distance of one stage from each other, 
caravansaries should be erected ; and that 
guards and watchmen should be stationed on 
the road, and that in every caravansary people 
should be appointed to reside ; and that the 
watching and guarding of the roads should 



40 The Mogtd Emperors 

appertain unto them ; and that those guards 
should be answerable for whatever should be 
stolen on the roads from the unwary traveller." 

"■ And I ordered that the Suddur and the 
judge should, from time to time, lay before 
me the ecclesiastical affairs of my empire ; 
and I appointed a judge in equity, that he 
might transmit unto me all civil matters of 
litigation that came to pass among my 
troops and my subjects." 

In these maxims and regulations we 
have a picture which, if it stood by itself, 
would portray an enlightened monarch, 
severe, perhaps, but not without benevolence. 
There is nothing in these paragraphs that 
might not have been written by Louis XIV. 
of France, for example, as a guide to his 
governors of Dauphine or of Languedoc. 
Hard as was the fate of the French peasant 
of that time under the semi-feudal rule of 
his various overlords, we know that it was 
freedom itself compared to the condition of 
Timur's subjects. How then are we to 
reconcile these liberal-minded maxims with 
the known facts ? 



Tamerlane the Great 41 

In the first place, we must remember that 
the Memoirs of Timur were written late in 
his life, when he desired to leave a memorial 
of himself which might serve to equal him to 
the most intelligent of the kings and sultans 
whom he had overthrown. Bagdad and 
Damascus were seats of learning and mag- 
nificence when he destroyed them. The 
mosques and colleges which he erected in 
Samarkand were no unworthy rivals of the 
edifices of those great cities. The ruler of 
Samarkand desired to be remembered along 
with the great Caliphs as a wise King and a 
patron of learning. This desire led him to 
throw a certain glamour over all his actions. 
Moreover, he had a high reverence for the 
laws of Chengiz-Khan, and he desired to 
leave behind him a code of the same sort, 
which should be reverenced by his own suc- 
cessors. 

He is even accused, by one of the his- 
torians, with valuing the laws of Chengiz 
above the Kuran, and in many ways his 
practice proves that the charge was true. 
The political ideal of Chengiz-Khan was the 



42 The Mogul Emperors 

formation of a military state, whose power 
should be centralized in the King. He lived 
long enough to realize this, in great measure, 
and to show his successors that it was possi- 
ble to weld scores of individual tribes into 
something like a nation. In Timur's day 
the theoretic basis of the State was the law 
of the Kuran. Timur's professions of Islam 
were loud ; he was a zealous builder of 
mosques, and a prompt paymaster of relig- 
ious tithes. But in all matters of State he 
was guided by the laws of Chengiz, not by 
those of Muhammad. The Muhammadan 
maxim, All Muslhns are brethren, makes 
nationality unimportant, or even impossible, 
as has often been pointed out. Timur never 
permitted a theory like this to interfere with 
immemorial usage, which was the basis of the 
laws of Chengiz-Khan. I suppose that the 
mass of his followers thought very little 
about religion of any kind, and were loyal 
to the King from fear of punishment and 
from hope of plunder. 

In the second place Timur was, in his own 
way and in his own day, a supremely wise 



Tamerlane the Great 43 

King. He had been one of the greatest 
of military commanders, but he had also 
" learned the incalculable advantage which 
wisdom has over force," and experience had 
taught him that the civilian subject must not 
be pressed more than so much, and that so 
much was enough to provide for the wants 
of his armies, and for the splendor of his 
government. It is impossible to believe that 
he was inspired by a sincere desire for the 
good of the husbandman, like one of his 
descendants ; but it is beyond a doubt that 
a long experience in governing had demon- 
strated to him that the subject must have 
something like fixity of tenure in his prop- 
erty, if the taxes were to comie in with 
regularity. His administration was modelled 
on what he had observed in Persia, in Syria, 
in Turkey. His maxims are very nearly 
such as would have been written by any 
good Muslim like his friend the Seiyid Ber- 
rekah. They are by no means the outcome 
of original thinking. They show, rather, 
how much of the practical wisdom of his 
predecessors in the ancient monarchies of 



44 The Mogul Emperors 

the East could be appreciated, at least theo- 
retically, by the descendant of Turki shep- 
herds. Appreciated, these maxims were, 
since they are set down in the Memoirs. 
Appropriated, as a practical code of laws 
for all his dominions, they were not. 

Again, we must recollect that the enlight- 
enme-nt of his empire was confined to a very 
few cities, and the learning to a very small 
number of doctors of the law and men of 
science. The military chiefs were profoundly 
illiterate and rude,* though they were very 

* The culture of the Arabs had, however, begun to penetrate the 
higher ranks, and the following anecdote is very interesting in 
showing how the old and the new ideals of conduct were blended : 
In the pursuit of the Sultan of Bagdad (Ahmed Khan, A.D. 1403), 
two of Timur's officers were perishing from thirst. They could 
only find two small pots of water. Aibaj Oghlan drank one, and 
declared to his companion, Jelalhamid, that he should die if he 
did not have the other also. Jelal recalled a tale of a Persian 
similarly circumstanced who had said to his Arab companion .• 
" The generosity of the Arabs is so famous that it has become pro- 
verbial everywhere. It would be a great proof of this truth if, to 
save me from certain death, you should give me your water also." 
To maintain the reputation of his race the Arab gave up his share 
of the water. Jelal went on to say : "I wish to imitate the Arab, 
and I will give you the water on condition that you will make 
known to the princes of your house this sacrifice ; so that the 



Tamerlane the Great 45 

much above the tribesmen. The tribesmen 
do not seem to have been superior to the 
Huron Indians, as we know them by the 
Jesuit Relations, for example. The cultivated 
land was of relatively small extent. The 
vast majority of the people were shepherds, 
and they have changed but little to this day 
wherever they have been left to themselves. 
It is only when they have come under the 
influence of superior races, as in China or 
in Hindustan, that they have taken on even 
a shade of culture. 

Timur's regulations referred theoretically, 
perhaps, to vast areas of his empire. It 
is certain, however, that they were nowhere 
enforced in the enlightened way suggested 
in these Memoii^s (" these lying Memoirs"), 

memory of this deed may always redound to the credit of the 
descendants of Jagatai Khan and be cited as a proof of my courage 
to all our descendants." Whereupon Jelal gave up his share. It 
is a pleasure to record that he did not die. 

The tales of Boccaccio (1350) show that the Italians of that day 
held the Arabs to be their teachers in chivalry, and at least their 
equals in art, in science, in civilization. The essence of this story, 
so it seems to me, is that Arab chivalry had also become the highest 
ideal of the Mogul chiefs of 1403 — of the rude and violent descend- 
ants of Jagatai. 



46 The Mogul Emperors 

and that they were in practical effect only 
along the main roads and in the immediate 
vicinity of the larger towns and cities. The 
Spanish ambassadors testify that the people 
were in " marvellous terror " of Timur and 
his servants. 

If we understand the Memoirs in this light 
they are of great importance. It is of 
immense interest to know that this absolute 
ruler even cared to appear to posterity as an 
enlightened King. It is clear that Timur 
had reflected profoundly on what he had 
been told by the wise men of his court and 
on what he had himself observed in foreign 
lands which were far beyond his own in 
culture. Great as was his genius and success 
as a Captain, we are forced to give an equal 
admiration to his intelligence as a Ruler. 
The maxims of his government were house- 
hold words in the courts of the Emperors, 
his descendants ; but their methods, though 
peremptory enough, were gentle compared 
to his. 

One of them — Akbar — two hundred years 
later actually carried out these regulations in 



Tamerlane the Great 47 

practical form, and Akbar's fame as a great 
King is forever secure for this reason alone. 

Timur's family affections were ardent and 
devoted. On his campaigns he was accom- 
panied by his wives and children to long 
distances from Samarkand. In 1382 his 
favorite daughter died, and he sank into a 
melancholy so deep and persistent as to 
threaten serious danger to the State, whose 
affairs he totally neglected. The death of 
his eldest sister and of a favorite wife in 
1383 affected him profoundly. He gave 
himself up to grief, and neglected all busi- 
ness till his attention was imperatively called 
for. He was fond of his sons and proud of 
them ; yet he ruled them with an iron rule. 
It is recorded that on occasions the princes, 
grown men and sturdy warriors, were sub- 
jected to the bastinado like the meanest of 
his slaves. 

The Persian poet Hafiz was a contem- 
porary of Timur's, and there is an anecdote of 
their meeting.'^ One of the ghazels declares 
that if this Turk would accept his homage, 

* Hafiz died, however, four years before the capture of Shiraz. 



48 The Mogul Emperors 

— For the black mole on his cheek 
I would give the cities of Samarkand and Bokhara. 

Timur upbraided him for this verse, and 
said : '* By the blows of my well-tempered 
sword I have conquered the greater part of 
the world in order to enlarge Samarkand and 
Bokhara, my capitals and residences ; and 
you, pitiful creature, would exchange these 
two cities for a mole." " O Sovereign of the 
world," said Hafiz, " it is by similar acts of 
generosity that I have been reduced, as you 
see, to my present state of poverty." It is 
reported that the monarch was appeased by 
the witty answer, and that the poet departed 
with magnificent gifts. 

A less likely tale is told of a jest of the 
poet Kermani, who, with other wits, was in 
the bath with Timur. The King asked the 
poet, "■ What price wouldst thou put on me if 
I were for sale?" "About five-and-twenty 
aspers'' said Kermani. " Why, that is about 
the price of the sheet I have on," rejoined 
Timur. " Well, of course I meant the sheet, 
for thou alone art not worth a farthing." 

Timur's Memoirs recite a few cases in 



Tamerlane the Great 49 

which he was merciful to the rulers or to 
the inhabitants of a city ; these are usually in 
the early portions of his career, before his 
power was consolidated, and it is never cer- 
tain that his mercy was not policy. He is 
always proud of the valor of his own troops, 
but it is not recorded that he was in the 
least tender or careful of them, except upon 
one occasion. He was returning from India 
with his spoils. " There was a river in the 
way, over which I crossed and encamped. 
Some of the sick men were drowned in cross- 
ing the river, so I directed that all my own 
horses and camels should be used for trans- 
porting the sick and feeble. On that day all 
my camp crossed the river." He was always 
profuse in his rewards to the survivors. He 
does not lament the dead in his own army, 
and, indeed, there is no reason why a good 
Muslim should do so. 

Early in his career Timur discovered, he 
says, " the incalculable advantage which wis- 
dom has over force, and with what small 
means the greatest designs may be accom- 
plished." He never forgot the lesson. He 
4 



50 The Mogul Emperors 

was no braver leader, hardly more skilled, 
than his Amirs ; but he was more crafty, 
more patient, more constant, and of abso- 
lutely indomitable will. 

His relation to his chiefs is well shown in 
the following extract from the Memoirs : 

" Timur Instructs the Princes and Amirs 
about the Conduct of the War 

" I now held a Court ; I issued a sum- 
mons to the princes, amirs, commanders of 
thousands, of hundreds, and to the braves of 
the advance-guard. They all came to my 
tent. All my soldiers v/ere brave veterans, 
and had used their swords manfully under 
my own eyes. But there were none who 
had seen so many fights and battles as I had 
seen, and no one who could compare with 
me in the amount of fighting I had gone 
through, and the experience I had gained.* 
I therefore gave them instructions as to the 
mode of carrying on war ; on making and 

* This refers to the year 1398 in India. Timur was then sixty- 
two years old. 



Tamerlane the Great 51 

meeting attacks ; on arraying their men ; on 
giving support to each other; and on all the 
precautions to be observed in war. . . . 
When I had finished [they] testified their 
approbation, and carefully treasuring up my 
counsel, they departed, expressing their 
blessings and thanks." 

Before setting out on an important cam- 
paign, Timur personally attended to the 
equipment and provisioning of his army. 
Supplies and forage were collected and 
stored. Each soldier was directed to furnish 
himself with a bow, thirty arrows, and a 
water-bag. Every ten men had, in common, 
a tent, two mattocks, a spade, a shovel, a 
sickle, a saw, a hatchet, a rope, a cooking- 
kettle, one hundred needles, an awl, besides 
the necessary riding and baggage animals. 
The equipment seems to be modest, except 
as to the supply of needles ; but the enumer- 
ation (from Price's Muhammadan History) 
omits the sword and buckler, the mace, the 
spear, the javelin, with which many soldiers 
were certainly provided ; and says nothing of 
the leather jerkins lined with iron, of the 



52 The Mogul Emperors 

helmets, or of the quilted cuirass for man and 
horse. The representation of two warriors 
fighting, used on the cover of this book, is 
copied from a Persian miniature of about 
Timur's day. 

The armies themselves were immense. 
Two hundred thousand skilled warriors were 
assembled for the conquest of China. At a 
review of his troops in Persia the front of the 
army covered more than seventeen miles. 
Irregular troops flocked to his standards in 
the hope of plunder. Thousands and thou- 
sands of camp-followers and prisoners were 
charged with the transportation and the col- 
lection of forage. His Mogul warriors were 
like the Afghans of Sultan Bahlol, "they 
knew only to eat and how to die." Their 
savagery is exactly that of the red Indian. 
To defile a Hindu sanctuary they filled their 
boots with the blood of the sacred cows and 
poured it over the idol. " Vanquished they ask 
no favor ; vanquishing they show no mercy," 

" My principal object in coming to Hindu- 
stan [says Timur] and in undergoing all this 
toil and hardship was to accomplish two 



Tamerlane the Great 53 

things. The first was to war with infidels, 
the enemies of the Muhammadan reHgion ; 
and by this religious warfare to acquire some 
claim to reward in the life to come. The 
other was a worldly object, that the army of 
Islam might gain something by plundering 
the wealth of the infidels : plunder in war is 
as lawful as their mothers' milk to Musul- 
mans who fight for their faith, and the con- 
suming of that which is lawful is a means of 
grace." 

This definition of the means of grace 
sounds like a distorted reminiscence of his 
friendship with the Seiyid Berrekah. 

" I have not been able [he said] to effect 
my vast conquests without some violence 
and the destruction of a great number of 
true believers ; but I am now resolved to 
perform a good and great action, which shall 
be an expiation of all my sins. I mean to 
exterminate the idolaters of China. And 
you, my dear companions, who have been 
the instruments of many of my crimes, shall 
share in the merit of this great work of 
repentance." Fortunately for the infidels of 



54 The Mogul Emperors 

China, he died at the very beginning of this 
enterprise. 

In nearly two-score campaigns Timur over- 
ran many kingdoms and tribes. " He anni- 
hilated empires as one tears up grass." He 
penetrated Siberia till his camps were nearly 
fifteen hundred miles distant from Samar- 
kand. His forces ravaged southeastern and 
southern Russia to the Don and the Sea of 
Azof. His invasions of India carried him to 
Delhi and beyond. Georgia, Anatolia, Ar- 
menia and Syria were conquered, and the 
great cities of Smyrna, Aleppo, Bagdad, and 
Damascus were destroyed. He was just 
beginning a campaign against China when 
he died, three hundred miles east of Samar- 
kand (a. d. 1405). 

Such amazing military successes imply 
genius of the first order, and of themselves 
justify his title — " the great." 

It cannot be said that he ruled the vast 
extent of conquered country ; but he ravaged 
all of it, and continued to receive tribute 
from a great part ; from the Persian Gulf to 
the Caspian, and from the Euxine to the 



Tamer la7ie the Great 55 

Ganges, the coins bore his device of over- 
lordship, and tribute and presents enriched 
his treasury. 

Timur had instructed his scribes to record 
whatever he should say, " even to the last 
moment of my existence." The injunction 
was carried out to the letter, for one manu- 
script of his Memoirs ends thus : " At night 
[March 19, a. d. 1405] calling upon the name 
of Allah, I lost my senses and resigned my 
pure soul to the Creator." His pure soul ! 

Thoroughly to realize the gulf which 
then separated the East and the West, we 
have but to recall a single date — our English 
Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey 
in October, a. d. 1400, 



56 The Mogul Emperors 



CHAPTER II 

ZEHIR-ED-DIN MUHAMMAD BABAR, THE CON- 
QUEROR, EMPEROR OF HINDUSTAN (bORN 
A.D. 1482, DIED 1530) 

The Memoirs of Babar begin with these 
words: **In the month of Ramazan and in 
the twelfth year of my age I became King of 
Ferghana. The country of Ferghana is 
situated in the fifth cHmate, on the extreme 
boundary of the habitable world. On the 
east it has Kashgar and on the west Samar- 
kand. The revenues of Ferghana may 
suffice, without oppressing the country, to 
maintain three or four thousand troops. 
It is a country of small extent, abound- 
ing in grain and fruits" — and of these 
fruits the melon is the favorite and the chief. 
To his dying day Babar remembered the 
melons of his native country. Ferghana was 
famous for its learned doctors of the law and 




HUMAYUN 
JAHANGIR 



BABAR 
AKBAR 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 57 

for its poets, too, as we shall see. It was 
one of the innumerable small states into 
which Timur's possessions had been divided 
after his death. This state had fallen to the 
share of Babar's father, "a prince of high 
ambitions," a strict Muhammadan, a patron of 
learning, a poet, and a friend of poets. His 
favorite poem was the famous Shah-na^neh of 
Firdausi, that chronicle of knightly deeds. 

He was renowned for his justice ; and 
Babar gives a striking Instance of it. A 
caravan from Northern China had perished in 
the snow near his capital, at a time when he 
was In real want. In spite of his necessities 
the merchandise was sacredly preserved till, 
after one or two years, the heirs of the 
merchants came to his city and received it, 
untouched, from his hands. " His generosity 
was large," says Babar, "and so was his whole 
soul ; he was of an excellent temper, affable 
and sweet in his conversation, yet brave, 
withal, and manly„" 

On his sudden death, Babar, his eldest son, 
sixth in descent from Timur, succeeded to the 
sovereignty, which he was, however, obliged 



58 The Mogul Emperors 

to dispute with his rival brothers and to pro- 
tect from external foes. Babar's mother was 
the daughter of Yunis-Khan, a direct de- 
scendant of Chengiz-Khan, thirteenth in the 
male line. " She accompanied me in most 
of my wars and expeditions." His maternal 
grandmother was a woman of extraordinary 
force and wise in counsel. " There were few 
of her sex who excelled her in sense and 
sagacity." These women were Babar's guides 
and counsellors in the small wars with which 
his early years were occupied. His Memoirs 
are a recital of hundreds of petty com- 
bats, sieges, and stratagems, " excursions and 
alarums," successes and defeats, in the struggle 
to retain Ferghana or to capture Samarkand. 
Babar succeeded to the throne about two 
years before the discovery of America by 
Columbus, and four years before Vasco da 
Gama reached India. Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella in Spain, Henry VII and Henry VIII 
in England, were his contemporaries. 

Babar's Memoirs were written with his 
own hand in the Turki language, and have 
come down to us practically unchanged. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 59 

They cover nearly all of his history to within 
a year of his death. All of this history is 
recounted in the most straightforward, simple, 
engaging, manly way. " I have no inten- 
tion," he says, '' in what I have written, to 
reflect on any one. All that I have said is 
only the plain truth. And I have not men- 
tioned it with the least design to praise 
myself. I have in every word most scrupu- 
lously followed the truth. Let the reader, 
therefore, excuse me." 

Babar's father had cherished an overpow- 
ering ambition to capture Samarkand, the 
ancient capital of Timor's kingdom, and 
Babar succeeded to the desire. During 
Timur's lifetime the government of the capi- 
tal had been conferred on one of his sons, 
and on a grandson. At Timur's death, his 
youngest son Shahrokh Mirza, the ruler of 
Khorassan, had seized the city, and had 
given it over to be ruled by his son Ulugh 
Beg Mirza, the famous astronomer ; " from 
whom it was taken," says Babar, " by his son 
Abdul-latif Mirza, who, for the sake of the 
enjoyments of this fleeting world, murdered 



6o The Mogul Efnperors 

his own father, an old man so illustrious 
for his knowledge. 

Ulugh Beg, the ocean of learning and science. 
Who was the protector of this lower world. 
Drank from Abbas the honey of martyrdom. 

Yet his son did not retain the diadem 
above five or six months ; 

— /// does sovereignty become a parricide ; 
But should he gain it, let six months be the limit of his reign. 

The verses are Babar's own, 

"After Abdul-latif Mirza,* Abdullah 
Mirza mounted the throne, and reigned 
nearly two years. After him the govern- 
ment was seized by Sultan Abusaid Mirza, 
who conferred it upon his eldest son Sultan 
Ahmed Mirza. On his death (1494) Sultan 
Mahmud Mirza ascended the throne, and 
after him, Baiesanghar Mirza. I took it 
from Baiesanghar Mirza. The events that 
followed will be mentioned in the course of 
these Memoir sy 

* There is a legend that Ulugh Beg, finding that the stars fore- 
told his assassination at the hands of his son, drove the latter into 
rebellion by unmerited ill-treatment. But Babar's view of the case 
is plainly different ; and it M^ould seem that Babar should know. 
See also Vambery's History of Bokhara, Chapter XII. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 6i 

The succession of rulers presents a vivid 
idea of the unsettled period in which Babar 
lived. Another striking instance may be 
given. He had five sisters; and two of the 
five were captured in war and found places in 
the harems of his enemies. These were the 
daughters and sisters of kings. 

The Memoirs go on to give the names and 
the characters of the Turki chiefs by whom 
Babar's cause was supported ; and his out- 
spoken judgments allow us to know his own 
character as well as theirs. One was " a 
good-humored man, of plain, simple manners, 
who excelled in singing at drinking parties." 
Another was *' a pious, religious, faithful 
Muslim, whose judgment and talents were 
uncommonly good. He was of a facetious 
turn, and though he could neither read nor 
write, he had an ingenious and elegant vein 
of wit." "■ Another was Mir Ali Dost, who 
was related to my maternal grandmother. I 
showed him great favor. I was told that he 
would be a useful man ; but during all the 
years that he was with me, I cannot tell 
what service he ever did." "Another was 



62 The Mogul Emperors 

Amir Omar-Beg. He was a brave, plain, 
honest man. A son of his is still with me ; 
he is a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing fellow. 
Such a father to have such a son ! " 

In this manner Babar runs over the cata- 
logue of his officers and companions, and 
weighs their qualities, just as the Emperor 
Marcus Aurelius sums up the character of his 
associates. Let these further instances suf- 
fice. 

"Indeed, Ali Shir Beg was an incompar- 
able person. From the time that poetry was 
first written in our language no man has 
written so much and so well. He also left 
excellent pieces of music ; excellent both as 
to the airs themselves and as to the preludes. 
There is not upon record in our history any 
man who was a greater patron of men of 
ingenuity and talent than he." Musicians, 
painters, and poets alike came under his pro- 
tection ; and he was singular in this, that he 
had neither wife nor child. " He passed 
through the world unencumbered." He de- 
clined the cares of government, and spent his 
time in study and composition. The follow- 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 63 

ing is his : " Oh, you who say, 'Do not curse 
Yazid, for possibly the Almighty may have 
mercy on him^ I say, if the Lord pardoneth 
all the evil which Yazid did to the descendants 
of the Prophet, he will also pardo7i you who 
may have cursed him^ 

" Another was Sheikhem Beg. He com- 
posed a manner of verses in which both the 
words and sense are terrifying and corres- 
pond with each other. The following is his : 

During my sorrows of the night the tvhirlpool of iny^ sighs bears 

the firmament from its place ; 
The dragons of the inutidations of my tears bear down the four 

quarters of the habitable world. ^'' 

When he repeated these verses, the Mulla 
said to him : " Are you repeating poetry, or 
are you frightening folks ? " * 

* I cannot resist quoting a short poem by Abd-er-Razzak to 
illustrate a different kind of Oriental exaggeration. He was on the 
shores of the Persian Gulf in May, 1442, and thus describes the 
intense heat : 

Soon as the sun shone forth frotn the height of heaven^ 
The heart of stone grew hot beneath its orb; 
The horizon was so much scorched-up by its rays. 
That the heart of stone became soft like wax ; 
The bodies of the fishes, at the bottovis of the fish-ponds. 
Burned like the silk which is exposed to the fire : 
Both the water and the air gave out so bursting a heat 
That the fish went away to seek refuge in the fire : 
In the plains, hunting became a matter of perfect ease. 
For the desert was filled with roasted gazelles. 



64 The Mogul Emperors 

The chief doctor of the canon law in Fer- 
ghana was executed by his enemy. Of him 
Babar, himself the bravest of men, says : " I 
have no doubt that he was a saint. What 
better proof of it than that all his enemies 
perished in a short while? He was also a 
very bold man, which is also no mean proof 
of sanctity. All mankind, however brave 
they be, have some little anxiety or trepida- 
tion about them. He had not a particle of 
either." 

Khosrou Shah was thoroughly hated by 
Babar, who says that, " For the sake of this 
fleeting and faithless world, which never was 
and never will be true to anyone, this thank- 
less and ungrateful man seized the Sultan, 
a prince whom he himself had reared from 
infancy to manhood, and whose tutor he had 
been, and blinded him by lancing his eyes. 
Every day till the day of judgment may a 
hundred thousand curses light on the head 
of that man who is guilty of such black 
treachery ; let every man who hears of this 
action of Khosrou Shah pour out impreca- 
tions upon him ; for he who hears of such 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 65 

a deed and does not curse him, is himself 
worthy to be cursed." Ali Shir's verses may 
have suggested the form of this passage. 

Such were the chiefs by whom Babar was 
surrounded, and through whom and against 
whom he had to act. Their followers were 
brave, but inconstant. Their cities alter- 
nately welcomed the straggling army of 
Babar (which was sometimes no more than 
two hundred warriors) and rejected it. 

Babar learned the art of war in a rough 
school, and he learned it thoroughly. On one 
occasion, much plunder was unjustly taken 
by his men, which he made them give up. 
" Such was the discipline of my army that 
the whole was restored without reserve, and 
before the first watch of the next day was 
over, there was not a bit of thread or a 
broken needle that was not restored to its 
owner." He was one of the first to intro- 
duce concerted action of divisions of his 
army in the place of mad rushes of sepa- 
rate hordes and tribes. 

Samarkand, the city of Babar's affections, 

was thrice taken and lost. He is never 
5 



66 The Mogul Emperors 

tired of dwelling on the perfection of its 
buildings. "In the whole habitable world 
there are few cities so pleasantly situated." 
Its walls were paced out by Babar's order, 
and found to be five English miles in 
circuit. " It is, he says, in latitude 39° ^j', 
longitude 99° 16'." This is the calculation 
from Ulugh Beg's " tables," the longitude 
being counted from Ferro. Ulugh Beg 
(i 393-1449) was far better fitted to shine 
as a man of science than as a king. His 
short reign of three years was a succession 
of misfortunes, but his fame as a mathema- 
tician and as an astronomer is permanent. 

Since the time of the Greek schools of 
Alexandria, the home of the exact sciences 
had been, successively, Bagdad, Cordova and 
Seville, Tangiers and Samarkand ; * and it 
was not until the time of Tycho (1576) 
that such learning was born in the western 
peoples. Ulugh Beg was the last of the 

* It is interesting to know that the new masters of Turkistan — 
the Russians — have lately established an observatory at Tashkend, 
four centuries and a half after the establishment of that at 
Samarkand. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar • 67 

Arabian school. A century and a half 
before Tycho, he constructed mighty instru- 
ments for astronomical observation, and, with 
the aid of a hundred observers and calcu- 
lators, he prepared his famous tables of the 
motions of the planets and his catalogues 
of stars. 

" Ulugh Beg's observatory," says Babar, 
"was erected on the skirts of the hill of 
Kolik, and was three stories in height. Not 
more than seven or eight observatories have 
been constructed in the world. Among 
these, one was erected by the Caliph Mamun, 
another was built by Ptolemy at Alexandria." 
The college, the baths, the mosques, all call 
for exceeding praise ; even "the bakers' shops 
are excellent, and the cooks are skilful." The 
streets of Samarkand were paved, and run- 
ning water was distributed in pipes. Once 
more we hear of its excellent melons, and 
of the wine of Bokhara, one of Its depend- 
encies. " When I drank wine at Samar- 
kand, in the days when I had my drinking 
bouts, I used that wine." It was a learned 
city, too, and hospitable to poets ; and here 



68 The Mogul Emperors 

Babar acquired and practised the poetic art 
himself, with no mean skill. 

The city was full of noble buildings, 
mosques, colleges, palaces, built by artisans 
impressed by Timur, and decorated with 
mosaics, gilding, and pictures.* 

The colleges were full of learned men and 
students ; the court of the kings, with poets 
and painters. This was the heyday of Turki 
learning, which blossomed in the midst of 
ignorance. Not all of the chief men could 
read and write, however, and the memory 
was therefore highly cultivated. As one of 
them said : " When a man has once heard 
anything, how can he forget it?" "Hilali, 
the poet, had so retentive a memory that he 
could recall from thirty to forty thousand 

* This was not orthodox for good Muslims. Muhammad says, 
" The angels do not enter a house in which is a dog, nor that 
house in which there are pictures ; " and in another place, more 
briefly, "every painter is in hell-fire." The Muslims, like the 
Jews, were no friends to painting and sculpture ; but noble archi- 
tecture early became a passion with them. After Babar's time the 
arts and learning rapidly declined in Samarkand, and by the seven- 
teenth century the city was stagnant. On May 14, 1868, the Rus- 
sians took possession, and the twentieth century may witness a 
revival of learning in the colleges of Turkistan. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 69 

couplets." Such mnemonic feats seem in- 
credible to us moderns, who are used to 
depend upon the eye and not upon the ear. 
Yet they are doubtless correctly reported. 
The Rig-Vcda contains more than ten 
thousand verses, and for over two thousand 
years it was preserved solely by oral tra- 
ditions, and not one, but thousands of 
Brahmins could recite it word for word. 

An alphabet introduced by Nestorian 
priests had been employed up to Babar's 
time, as I have said ; but he invented and 
introduced a new manner of writing — the 
Babari character — and his presents to great 
nobles were often copies of his poems, 
written out by his transcribers. He himself 
was a great stickler for propriety in com- 
position ; and on one occasion he soundly 
rates his eldest son, Humayun, then the 
reigning monarch in Kabul, for various 
literary errors. "In consequence of the 
far-fetched words you have employed, your 
meaning is by no means very intelligible. 
Your spelling is not bad, yet not quite 
correct. You certainly do not excel in 



7© The Mogul Emperors 

letter-writing. In the future you should 
write unaffectedly, with clearness, using 
plain words, which cost less trouble to 
both writer and reader." 

Here is one of Babar's early couplets, 
written when he was in great distress : 

Do thou resign to Fate him who injures thee. 

For Fate is a servant that will not leave thee unavenged. 

And again : 

Let the sword of the world be brandished as it may. 

It cannot cut one vein without the permissioii of Allah ! 

I have found no faithful friend in the world but my soul ; 
Except my own heart, I have no trusty confidant. 

The period to which this refers was a 
dark one in Babar's fortunes. He had lost 
Ferghana, and Samarkand was no longer his. 

"For nearly one hundred and forty years 
Samarkand had been the capital of my 
family. A foreign robber,* one knew not 

* This "foreign robber " was a direct descendant of Chengiz- 
Khan, and, therefore, a relative of Babar himself, who, however, 
was no friend to the Mogul tribesmen, but counted himself a Turki. 
Babar is unjust to this rival Sheibani in his Memoirs, as also to 
another rival, Khosrou Shah. Sheibani Khan was an enterprising 
and successful soldier, a poet, a scholar in Arabic, Turki, and 
Persian, a builder of colleges and mosques, and a notable patron of 
learned men. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 71 

whence he came, had seized the kingdom, 
which dropped from our hands. Almighty 
Allah now gave me back my plundered and 
pillaged country." It was lost to him, how- 
ever, by the issue of a pitched battle. " Such 
was our situation when I precipitated matters 
and hurried on the battle ; 

He who with impatient haste lays his hand on his sword, 
Will afterward gnaw that hand with his teeth from regret, 

" The cause of my eagerness to engage 
was, that the stars called the 'eight stars' 
were on that day exactly between the two 
armies ; and if I had suffered that day to 
elapse, they would have been favorable to 
the enemy," And he goes on to say, with 
the experience of his later years : " These 
observances were all nonsense, and my pre- 
cipitation was without the least solid excuse." 

This battle lost him his kingdom once 
more ; but he never quite recovered from 
superstition. Witness the following involved 
account of his reasons for refusing a battle 
in India toward the end of his life : " If on 
that same Saturday I had fought, it is prob- 



72 The Mogul Emperors 

able that I should have won. But It came 
into my head that last year I had set out 
on a New Year's Day, which fell on a Tues- 
day, and had overthrown my enemy on a 
Saturday. This year we commenced our 
march on New Year's Day, which fell on a 
Wednesday, and if we beat them on a Sun- 
day it would be a (too) remarkable coin- 
cidence. On that account I did not march 
my troops " ! 

I have now to recount what Is, and will 
doubtless remain, one of the standing puz- 
zles of Babar's history. We shall see that 
Babar was the soul of outspoken boldness, 
and that he was not afraid to confess himself 
in the wrong, nor unwilling to amend. He 
was skilled in the devices of poetic art, but 
the very essence of the dramatic power of 
his Memoirs Is their flowing naturalness and 
simplicity. The Memoirs continue to about 
the year 1529, a year before his death. 
Remembering all this. It Is more than strange 
to find In them two sudden gaps, where the 
narrative breaks off abruptly, and leaves the 
hero in the midst of the extremest perils. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 73 

The first of these gaps occurs at the end 
of the year 1502, and the narrative is not 
resumed until 1504. 

Babar is defending a fortress with scarcely 
more than a hundred men. His enemies 
arrive, and after a severe fight he is forced to 
cut his way to the nearest gateway and to fly. 
Every detail of a most exciting hand-to-hand 
fight is given, even to the number of arrows 
that Babar discharged. " A man on horse- 
back passed close to me, fleeing up the nar- 
row lane (of the city). I struck him such a 
blow on the temples with the point of my 
sword that he bent over as if ready to fall 
from his horse, but, supporting himself on the 
wall of the lane, he did not lose his seat, and 
escaped with the utmost hazard." Through 
hand-to-hand fighting like this, Babar escapes, 
and gains the open country, warmly pursued. 
His adherents are soon reduced to eight, and 
presently Babar is fleeing alone. At last 
only two of the enemy were close to him. 

" They gained upon me ; my horse began 
to flag. What was to be done ? I had about 
twenty arrows left. The pursuers did not 



74 The Mogtil Emperors 

come nearer than a bowshot, but kept on 
trackingr me." The fliofht had beg^un before 
afternoon prayers, and it was now sunset. 
His enemies called to him, but he pushed on 
till about bedtime prayers, when he reached 
a place where his horse could go no farther. 
His pursuers swore to him by the Kuran 
that they wished to do him no harm. He 
forced them to proceed in front of him out 
of the glen where they were, towards the 
road, and they continued marching till the 
dawn. The next day they lay concealed, with 
but little food, and only a moment for sleep. 
After midnight another enemy arrived with 
the information that Babar's chief rival knew 
their place of concealment. He had been 
betrayed by his companions. " I was thrown 
into a dreadful state of agitation. There is 
nothing which affects a man with more pain- 
ful feelings than the near prospect of death. 
* Tell me the truth,' I exclaimed, * if indeed 
things are about to go with me contrary to 
my wishes, that I may at least perform my 
last ablutions.' I felt my strength gone. 
I rose and went to a corner of the garden. I 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 75 

meditated with myself and said : * Should a 
man live a hundred, nay a thousand years, 

yet at last he ' " So the narrative breaks 

off. 

It is not resumed for two years, when 
Babar's fortunes had improved vastly. Is it 
a piece of literary art ? Is it to spare him 
the recital of the successful intrigues by 
which he drove Khosrou Shah from his king- 
dom and took his place ? Is he ashamed of 
these intrigues, and is this the reason why he 
blackens the character of Khosrou, of whom 
others speak so well ? There is no solution. 

The first break in the narrative might be 
taken as an accident if it were not for a sec- 
ond occurrence of the same kind in the year 
1 5o8, when Babar was deserted by the very 
Moguls whom he had seduced from their 
allegiance to Khosrou Shah, and by all his 
followers of every rank and description. 
From this second misfortune Babar rescued 
himself by desperate fighting and reckless 
personal valor, as we learn from other 
sources. The fickle tribesmen deserted their 
former rulers and attached themselves to 



76 The Mogul Emperors 

his fortunes. The Persians became his allies. 
The cities opened their gates, and he became 
the master of Kabul, and Kabul was the 
stepping-stone to India. 

Sheibani, the ancient enemy of Babar, who 
had usurped his kingdom of Samarkand, 
came to a violent end. His body was dis- 
membered, and his limbs were sent to differ- 
ent kingdoms. His head was stuffed with 
hay and sent to the Turkish emperor at 
Constantinople. His skull, set in gold, was 
used by the Persian king as a drinking-cup. 
Babar's allies, the Persians, put fifteen thou- 
sand prisoners to the sword. Many of these 
were of Babar's own race, and this alliance 
with the Persians did not help him to re- 
cover his kingdom, though his worst enemies 
were overcome by their assistance, and he 
was thus left free to execute his conquest 
of Hindustan. Taking aid from the hated 
Shias of Persia could never be approved 
by the orthodox Turki Sunnis of Trans- 
oxania. 

Herat, too, had fallen into the hands of 
his allies and relatives, and he made a long 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar "]*] 

stay at their court. At a great feast in 
Herat, Babar had another occasion to show 
his simple manners. He records the event 
thus : "In the course of the feast a roast 
goose was put down in front of me. As I 
was ignorant of the mode of carving it, I let 
it alone. Badia-ez-Zeman Mirza (the head 
of Babar's family) asked me if I did not like 
it ; I told him frankly that I did not know 
how to carve it." The court was refined and 
luxurious, and this was a great feast of 
Babar's relatives to him as a young man. 
It cost him a little to confess his ignorance 
of so simple a thing. But he did not 
shrink. 

The fortunes of this city of Herat — Heri 
— the Aria of the Greek chronicles of Alex- 
ander — deserve a chapter, not a brief para- 
graph. In the time of Chengiz-Khan it was 
a crowded city, having, with its surrounding 
country, a population of several hundreds of 
thousands. After its first siege of a.d. 
1 222-1 223 its inhabitants were spared. A 
revolt on their part led to the second siege 
of seven months, and to its capture. For 



"jd) The Mogul Emperors 

seven days and nights it was devoted to 
plunder and massacre, and the native his- 
torians aver that more than a milHon persons 
perished. Whatever the exact number may 
have been, the Mogul troops did not leave 
until it was supposed no single inhabitant 
remained alive. After their departure some 
three thousand wretched beings assembled 
amid the ruins. In a few hours a band of 
two thousand Moguls returned and completed 
the slaughter, and the remnant perished to a 
man, save for sixteen miserable creatures 
who had hidden themselves in sewers, in 
water-courses, in the dome of the mosque. 
These finally crept fearfully forth amid the 
smoking ruins of the great and beautiful 
city. They were joined by other four and 
twenty from the surrounding country, and 
for fifteen years these forty individuals were 
the only inhabitants of the proudest city of 
the East, which had counted her children by 
hundreds of thousands. Herat was rebuilt 
by Octal Khan about a.d. 1235, and it soon 
recovered its splendor. In the time of Babar 
it was the most polite city of the East. 



Zehir-ed-din Mtihammad Baba'} 79 

Herat is the soul, of which this world is but 
the body ; and if Khorassan be the bosom of 
the world, Herat is allowed to be the heart. 

This is Babar's account of it : 

" The city of Herat abounded with emi- 
nent men of unrivalled acquirements, each of 
whom made it his aim and ambition to carry 
to the highest perfection the art to which 
he devoted himself. Among these was the 
Moulana Abdul-rahman Jami, to whom no 
person of the period could be compared, 
whether in respect to sacred or to profane 
science. His poems are well known. His 
merits are of too exalted a nature to admit 
of being described by me ; but I have been 
anxious to bring the mention of his name 
and an allusion to his excellences into these 
humble pages for a good omen and a bless- 
ing." The following quatrain of Babar's is 
not out of place here : 

Though I am not related to Dervishes, 

Yet I am devoted to them heart and soul. 

Say not that the state of a Prince is remote from that of a Dervish ; 

Though a King, I am the Dervish's slave. 

Babar enumerates the many wise men, 



8o The Mogul Emperors 

poets, and musicians who were living in 
Herat in his youth, Jami was the chief of 
the poets, but he finds space for short biog- 
raphies of a dozen others, and for some 
account of the skilled painters and musi- 
cians of the court. Professor Vambery, who 
should be an authority on such matters, 
declares : * 

" Every notion a Muhammadan in Asia 
or elsewhere possesses (at this day) of 
culture, refinement, high civilization — in 
short, of all those qualities now only known 
to him by name — is derived from the con- 
ditions which then (in the times from Timur 
to Babar) flourished at the courts of Herat 
and Samarkand." By diligently reading the 
annals of these alien people, they come to 
seem almost familiar to us, because we 
distinguish the underlying note of a common 
human nature, and almost lose the superficial 
sense of foreignness. Everything appears so 
modern that we need to force ourselves to 
return abruptly to our accustomed standards 
in order to preserve a right perspective. 

'^History of Bokhara, page 241. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 8i 

The poets and artists of Herat in 1507 form 
a group that is almost friendly. To acquire 
a due perception of their separateness, we 
must seek for a sharp antithesis. The 
poems of Ali Shir Beg touch us to-day, but 
we are forced to recognize that Schubert's 
B-minor symphony would be mere discord 
to him. 

The incident which follows, shows Babar's 
estimate of the value of poetry, and exhibits 
his straightforward simplicity of mind. He 
says : " During a drinking party the fol- 
lowing verse was repeated : 

What can one do to regulate his thoughts, with a mistress 

possessed of every blandishment? 
Where you are, how is it possible for our thoughts to wander 

to another? 

" It was agreed that everyone should make 
an extempore couplet to the same rhyme, 
and I said : 

What can be done with a drunken sot like you ? 
What can be done with one foolish as a she-ass? 

" Before this I had always committed my 
verse to writing. Now, when I had com- 
posed these lines, my mind led me to reflec- 



82 The Mogul Einpero7''s 

tions, and my heart was struck with regret 
that a tongue which could repeat the sublim- 
est productions should bestow any trouble 
on such unworthy verses ; that it was melan- 
choly that a heart, elevated to nobler con- 
ceptions, should submit to occupy itself with 
these despicable fancies. From this time 
forward I religiously abstained from satir- 
ical or vituperative verses. At the time I 
had not considered how objectionable the 
practice was." Later on, we find him trans- 
lating a religious tract into verse. " I com- 
posed every day, on an average, fifty-two 
couplets." 

In a winter's journey to Kabul the army 
was deeply distressed by snows and storms. 
Finally they halted at a cave. Babar dug 
for himself a hole in the snow " as deep as 
my breast and the size of a prayer-carpet," 
and sat down in it. " Some desired me to 
go into the cavern, but I would not go. I 
felt that for me to be in a warm dwelling and 
in comfort, while my men were in the midst 
of snow and drift ; for me to be enjoying 
sleep and ease, while they were in distress ; 



Zehir-ed-din Mtihammad Babar '^'^ 

would be a deviation from that society in 
suffering which was their due. I continued, 
therefore, to sit in the drift." 

On another of his night marches against 
the enemy, he ascended a high pass. "Till 
this time I had never seen the star Soheil — 
Canopus (which is, indeed, not visible in 
northern latitudes), but on reaching the top, 
Soheil appeared below, bright, to the south. 
I said, * This cannot be Soheil. ' They 
answered, * It is, indeed, Soheil.'" The 
descendant of Ulugh Beg came justly by 
his knowledge of the stars — even of the 
stars which he had never seen. How many 
of our soldiers of to-day would recognize 
Canopus if they saw it ? 

In his early youth Babar was shamefaced 
and modest, and for a long time he used 
no wine. In later years he caroused with a 
kind of fierce regularity, and he duly chroni- 
cles each of his drinkingf-bouts. After the 
battle which gave him India, he made, as he 
says, "an effectual repentance," which was 
sincere. He broke all his jewelled golden 
drinking-cups and gave them to dervishes 



84 The Mogul Emperors 

and the poor, made his store of wine into 
vinegar, and finally issued a proclamation of 
his change of life, and humbled himself before 
Allah. 

Let us see how a tyrant dreams. Once 
when Babar had taken a potion of bhang, 
he fell asleep and has recorded his dream : 
*' While under its influence I visited some 
beautiful gardens. In different beds the 
ground was covered with flowers. On the 
one hand were beds of yellow flowers in 
bloom ; on the other hand, red flowers were 
in blossom. In many places they sprung up 
in the same bed, mingled together, as if they 
had been flung and scattered abroad. I took 
my seat on a rising ground to enjoy the view 
of all the flower-plots. As far as the eye 
could reach, there were flower-gardens of a 
similar kind." Recollect that this history 
was written years after the dream. And 
then he adds : " In the neighborhood of 
Peshawer, during the spring, the flower-plots 
are exquisitely beautiful." Wherever this 
stern warrior went, he planted flower-gardens 
and orchards and built places of delight. 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 85 

A little distance from Kabul, Babar con- 
structed a small cistern of red granite on a 
site overlooking the city, and engraved on its 
sides these verses : 

Sweet is the return of the new year ; 

Sweet is the smiling spring ; 

Sweet is the juice of the mellow grape ; 

Sweeter far the voice of love. 

Strive, oh Babar ! to sectire the joys of life. 

Which, alas! once departed, never more return. 

"I directed this fountain to be built 
around with stone. On the four sides of 
the fountain a fine platform for resting was 
constructed on a very neat plan. At the 
time when the Ai^ghwan flowers begin to 
blow, I do not know that any place in the 
world is to be compared with it." 

From Kabul he made several incursions 
into India, which were mere raids, and finally 
he set out on his expedition of conquest, 
aided by the disaffected nobles of the Penjab. 
There is no space to relate the complex wars 
and negotiations, nor to describe the final 
great battle which gave him Agra, the capi- 
tal. His armies were the Turki hordes with 
Indian allies ; 



86 The Mogtil Emperors 

— In whose stern faces shined the quenchless fire 
That after burnt the pride of Asia, 

His success was largely due to the disci- 
pline which he was one of the first to 
introduce. The men were armed with bows 
and arrows, spears, cimeters, and maces, and 
a few matchlocks. The siege artillery of 
that day was clumsy and ponderous. 
" While the bridge of the Ganges was con- 
structing, Ustad AH Kuli played his gun 
remarkably well. The first day he dis- 
charged it eight times ; the second, sixteen 
times ; and for three or four days he contin- 
ued firing in the same way. It was called 
the Victorious Gun, and Ustad Khan was 
rewarded for his success." 

After the capture of Agra, in i526, the 
treasure was distributed. Humayun, Babar's 
eldest son and successor, obtained eighty- 
seven thousand dollars, besides a palace. 
His other sons and the emirs received all 
the way from twenty thousand to seventy- 
five hundred dollars. " Every merchant, 
every man of letters, everyone in the 
army, all my relatives and friends, great and 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 87 

small, had presents In silver and gold, in 
cloth, in jewels, and in captive slaves." 
Every man, woman, and child, slave or free, 
in the country of Kabul, received a silver 
coin of the value of an English shilling. 
Babar's lavishness became a proverb. 

At the same time the famous diamond was 
captured. " It is so valuable," says Babar, 
" that it is valued at half the daily expense 
of the whole world." * 

Babar was thus settled on the throne of 
India, and had become the founder of an 
empire. Let us see what the conqueror 
thought of his conquest. 

" Hindustan is a country that has few 
pleasures to recommend it. The people are 
not handsome. They have no idea of friendly 
society. They have no genius, no compre- 
hension of mind, no politeness of manner, 
no kindness or fellow-feeling, no ingenuity or 
mechanical invention in planning or executing 
their handicraft works ; no skill or knowledge 

* This may have been the stone, The Ocean of Lustre, now in 
the treasury of the Shah of Persia. It was not ihe Kohimir, accord- 
ing to the latest authorities. 



88 The Mogul Emperors 

in design or architecture ; they have no good 
horses, no good flesh, no grapes or musk- 
melons, no ice or cold water, no good food 
or bread, no (public) baths or colleges, no 
candles, no torches, not a candle-stick even." 
" The chief excellency of Hindustan is that it 
is a large country, and has abundance of gold 
and silver," and many skilled artisans. In 
Agra alone, he daily employed 680 mechan- 
ics, and he kept 149 1 stone-masons busy with 
his various buildings. In another place he 
says : " The people of Hindustan, and particu- 
larly the Afghans, are a strangely foolish and 
senseless race, possessed of little reflection 
and less foresight. They can neither persist 
in and manfully support a war, nor can they 
continue in amity and friendship." 

His life had been one of incessant activity 
and strife up to this time. "■ From the 
eleventh year of my age onward I have 
never spent two festivals of the Ramazan in 
the same place." When he was fourteen 
years of age he was present at a siege, and 
complains : " For two months there was 
nothing but siege operations, and no fine 



Zehir-ed-dm Muhammad Babar 89 

fighting." All his active life he spent in fine 
fighting or in marching to the fray. 

" This day I swam across the River Ganges 
for amusement. I had previously crossed, 
by swimming, every river that I had met 
with, the Ganges alone excepted." 

In India he had to contend with secret 
enemies, as well as with armies in the 
field. 

In Agra, Babar was poisoned through the 
treachery of his cooks and the carelessness of 
the taster. '' The taster was ordered to be 
cut to pieces. I commanded the cook to 
be flayed alive. One of the women was 
trampled to death by an elephant, the other 
was shot by a matchlock." Babar recovered. 
" Thanks be to Allah ! I did not fully compre- 
hend before that life was so sweet a thing. 
The poet says : 

Whoever conies to the gates of Death, 
Knows the value of Life. 

Whenever these awful occurrences pass before 
my memory, I feel myself involuntarily turn 
faint. The mercy of Allah has bestowed a 



90 The Mogul Emperors 

new life upon me, and how can my tongue 
express my gratitude ? " 

By a singular good fortune, we have two 
of Babar's letters. One is written to his sons 
in warning and reproof. The other is to 
an. old and trusted friend in Kabul. The 
first letter shows that he was disappointed 
and hurt by the conduct of his children ; and 
the last is an outpouring of the griefs of his 
inmost heart to his friend. He says : " My 
solicitude to visit my western dominions 
(Kabul) is boundless and great beyond 
expression. I trust in Almighty Allah that 
the time is near at hand when everything 
will be completely settled in this country. 
As soon as matters are brought to that state, 
I shall, with the permission of Allah, set out 
for your quarters without a moment's delay. 
How is it possible that the delights of those 
lands should ever be erased from the heart ? 
How is it possible to forget the delicious 
melons and grapes of that pleasant region ? 
They very recently brought me a single 
musk-melon from Kabul. While cutting it 
up, I felt myself affected with a strong 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 91 

feeling of loneliness and a sense of my exile 
from my native country, and I could not help 
shedding tears." He gives long instructions 
on the military and political matters to be 
attended to, and continues without a break : 
**At the southwest of Besteh, I formed a 
plantation of trees ; and as the prospect from 
it was very fine, I called it Nazergah (the 
view). You must there also plant some 
beautiful trees, and all around sow beautiful 
and sweet-smelling flowers and shrubs." And 
he goes straight on : " Syed Kasim will 
accompany the artillery." After more 
details of the government, he quotes fondly 
a little, trivial incident of former days and 
friends, and says: "Do not think amiss of 
me for deviating into these fooleries." " I 
conclude with every good wish." 

Towards the end of 1529 Babar's health 
failed rapidly, and his son Humayun also 
fell ill. The latter was conveyed to Agra 
and tenderly cared for, but his life was 
despaired of. One of Babar's high officers, 
distinguished for his piety, said to Babar 
that Almighty Allah might vouchsafe to 



92 The Mogul Emperors 

spare Humayun's life in return for the sac- 
rifice of Babar's most precious possession, 
and suggested that the great diamond cap- 
tured at Agra be the offering. " No," said 
Babar, " my own life is the most precious 
of my possessions, and I devote it to this 
end." He three times walked about the 
dying prince and retired to pray. Returning 
he exclaimed, '' I have borne it away ; " and 
in fact, from that time Babar declined and 
his beloved son waxed stronger. With his 
unvarying affection for his family, he be- 
sought Humayun to be kind and forgiving 
to his brothers, and, what is rare in such 
cases, the admonition was faithfully respected 
during many trying years. In a short time 
Death, the sunderer of societies, the garnerer 
of graveyards, the plunderer of palaces, bore 
him away to the mercy of Allah, the com- 
passionating, the compassionate, and his son 
reigned in his stead. 

" The grave of Babar is marked by two 
erect slabs of white marble, and, as is common 
in the East, the different letters of a part of 
the inscription indicate the number of the 



Zehir-ed-din Muhammad Babar 93 

year of the Hegira in which the Emperor 
died. The device, in the present instance, 
seems to me happy : 

When in heaven Roozvan asked the date of his death, 

I told him that heaven is the eternal abode of Babar Padishah. 

" Near the Emperor his wives and chil- 
dren have been interred, and the garden, 
which is small, was once surrounded by a 
wall of marble. A running and clear spring 
yet waters the fragrant flowers of this ceme- 
tery, which is the great holiday resort of the 
people of Kabul. In front of the grave there 
is a small but chaste mosque of marble, and 
an inscription upon it sets forth that it was 
built in the year 1640, by order of the Em- 
peror Shah Jahan, that poor Muhammadans 
might here offer up their prayers." * 

From the hill which overlooks Babar's 
tomb there is a noble prospect, and the 
gardens of the city are in full blossom 
beneath it. In Babar's own words, "the 
verdure and flowers render Kabul, in the 
spring, a very heaven." 

* Burnes' Travels into Bokhara, quoted by Erskine. 



94 T^^^ Mogul Emperors 

Babar has portrayed his own character in 
words which every generous heart will 
understand. He was a gentleman and a 
soldier — throughbred. He had prudence, 
knowledge, energy, ambition, and generosity, 
and "all the qualities from which nobility 
derives its name." " Exaltation was written 
on his forehead." Mr. Erskine, the trans- 
lator of his Afemotrs, has summed it up 
judiciously: "A striking feature in Babar s 
character is his unlikeness to other Asiatic 
princes. Instead of the stately, systematic, 
artificial character that seems to belong to 
the throne in Asia, we find him natural, 
lively, affectionate, simple, retaining on the 
throne all the best feelings and affections of 
common life. We shall find few princes who 
are entitled to rank higher than Babar in 
genius and accomplishment. His grandson 
Akbar may perhaps be placed above him 
for profound and benevolent policy. The 
crooked artifice of Aurangzeb is not enti- 
tled to the same distinction. The merit of 
Chengiz-Khan and of Tamerlane terminates 
in their splendid conquests, which far excelled 



Zchir-ed-din Muhmnmad Babar 95 

the achievements of Babar. But in activity 
of mind, in the gay equanimity and unbroken 
spirit with which he bore the extremes of 
good and bad fortune, in the possession of 
the manly and social virtues, so seldom the 
portion of princes, in his love of letters, and 
his success in the cultivation of them, we 
shall find no other Asiatic prince who can 
justly be placed beside him." 

Two sayings of Babar's, placed side by 
side, give the key to all his public actions. 
" Inspired as I was with an ambition for 
conquest and for extensive dominion, I would 
not, on account of one or two defeats, sit 
down and look idly around me ; " and again, 
" How can any man of understanding pursue 
such a line of conduct as, after his death, 
must stain his fair fame ? The wise have 
well called Fame a second existence." 

The circumstances of Oriental and of 
Western life are totally dissimilar. " Between 
us and them crawls the nine-times-twisted 
stream of Death." If we can make the 
needed allowances for these differences of 
time and circumstance, Babar will appear not 



96 The Mogul Emperors 

unworthy to be classed with the great Csesar 
as a general, as an administrator, as a man of 
letters. His character is more lovable than 
Caesar's, and reminds us of Henry IV of 
France and Navarre. He conquered India 
and founded a mighty empire. Take him 
for all in all, he was the most admirable of 
the Mogul kings. 



Humaymiy Emperor of Hindustan 97 



CHAPTER III 

HUMAYUN, EMPEROR OF HINDUSTAN (a. D. 

I 530-1 5 56) THE ADVENTURES OF FOUR 

BROTHERS 

" When Fortune's adverse, minds are perverse." — Persian 

SAYING. 

The intelligent Bernier, in his recital of 
the events of a later reign, explains in a 
sentence the fatal defect in the policy of 
the Mogul Empire. " I desire," he says, 
"that reflection be made on the unhappy 
custom of this state, which, leaving the pos- 
session of the crown undecided, exposeth it 
to the conquest of the strongest." At the 
death of every emperor a struggle took place 
between the adherents of his various sons, 
or even grandsons or nephews. The strong- 
est won ; and then proceeded to assure a 
lasting peace by doing away with his rivals. 
They were either put to death at once, 
or their eyes were blinded, or they were 



98 The Mogul Emperors 

imprisoned in the hill-fort of Gwalior, or 
stupefied with opium, or they fled into Persia, 
or they were forced to make the pilgrimage 
to Mecca. If the new emperor was not 
strong or cruel enough to impose the severer 
punishments, his rivals were sent to govern 
distant portions of the realm, whence they 
often returned to vex his power. What 
may be called the most "prosperous" reigns 
in India, have been those in which there 
were the fewest living heirs to the throne. 
The later Moguls understood this well, and 
were cruel or crafty enough to carry out the 
safe policy to its extreme. 

In Humayun, we have an example of a 
Mogul prince whose whole life was spent in 
agitation or in exile, because he was too 
affectionate, too filial, and too kind to go 
to such extremities. His blood was Turki, 
and not yet Hindu. 

Babar, the father of Humayun, fulfilled 
the highest Turki ideal ; he had, as we 
have seen, " prudence, knowledge, energy, 
ambition, and generosity — qualities from 
which nobility draws its name." 



Humayttn, Emperor of Hindustani 99 

A short while before his death, Babar 
called for his son and heir (Humayun), and 
charged him that if Allah should grant him 
the throne and crown, he should not put 
his brothers to death, but deal kindly with 
them. Humayun promised obedience, and 
notwithstanding that his brothers (Kamran, 
Hindal, Mirza-Askari) were continually 
opposed to him, and often in open war, he 
forgot their hostile proceedings as soon as 
he had vanquished them, for many years, 
and on many separate occasions. 

His kindness was the source of all his 
woes ; and, like many a quality which is 
amiable in a private person, was well-nigh 
fatal to the state. It was not until his 
brothers were removed by war or otherwise, 
towards the last of his reign, that the Empire 
had any sort of peace. The Hindus man- 
aged such things better ; as in the example 
thus related by an ancient historian : 

" In the time of Sultan Mahmud, a Hindu 
rajah asked his aid against an enemy who 
aspired to the same sovereignty. He ex- 
plained the situation to the Sultan thus : 



lOO The Mogul Emperors 

' In my religion the killing of kings is 
unlawful ; but the custom is, that when one 
king gets another into his power, he makes 
a small and dark room underneath his own 
throne, and, having put his enemy into it, 
he leaves a hole open. Every day he sends 
a tray of food into that room, until one or 
the other of the king^s dies.' " 

Humayun succeeded to the throne in a.d. 
1530. His brother Kamran was then gov- 
ernor of Kabul, the capital from whence 
Babar had set out for his conquest of India. 
It was clearly Babar's intention that the 
empire should not be divided, and that 
Kabul should remain subject to Hindustan. 
The armies of the emperor were recruited 
mainly from the- Turki, Mogul, and Afghan 
tribes of this neighborhood, and while there 
were vast numbers of Hindu auxiliaries, 
the latter were even less faithful than the 
Moguls. The officers of the army, espe- 
cially, had to be drawn from Persia and 
the countries outside of India. Humayun 
yielded to Kamran the kingdom of Kabul, 
and added to it the countries bordering on 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan loi 

the Indus, and the Panjab. Prince Hindal 
was made governor of Sambal, and Mirza- 
Askarl of Mewat. Humayun was emperor 
of Hindustan, but had not retained the 
sources of the military power by which alone 
it could be firmly held. The army still 
remained, but there were no sure means 
of increasing, or even of maintaining, its 
fighting strength. 

The emperor's wars began with the inva- 
sion of Guzerat and the suppression of rebel- 
lions elsewhere. The siege of one of the hill- 
forts was the occasion of two incidents, each 
highly characteristic of Humayun. The first 
stages of the siege had been very unsuccess- 
ful. All the practicable approaches to the 
fort were closely guarded. An almost verti- 
cal precipice bounded one side of the plateau 
on which the fort was built, and Humayun 
determined to attack it by night on this side. 
Accordingly steel spikes were prepared and 
driven right and left, one by one, into the 
face of the cliff, in the form of a ladder. The 
emperor himself accompanied a party of 
three hundred men to the perilous attack. 



I02 The Mogtd Emperors 

which was successful. Humayun was the 
forty-first in order to ascend. 

It was known that the castle contained 
much treasure, but a strict search failed 
to find it. In this juncture Humayun's 
officers advised that the prisoners be tor- 
tured till they confessed. The emperor's 
counsel was to treat them with kindness, 
rather, and this was followed. The water 
was drawn off from a vast cistern, and 
the treasure found in a chamber beneath it, 
according to information given by one of the 
prisoners to his generous captor. 

Humayun's great personal bravery and his 
humanity are well exhibited in these two 
incidents. 

Mirza-Askari, his youngest brother, who 
was left in charge of these first conquests, 
soon began to show his want of subordina- 
tion. At a convivial party he took too much 
wine, and began to boast that he, too, was " a 
king and the shadow of Allah." Just at this 
time the war with Sher-Shah, the Afghan 
ruler of Berar, began to be serious. The 
province of Bengal was overrun by Sher- 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan 103 

Shah's forces, and Humayun was committed 
to a campaign in the rainy season. The sol- 
diers deserted when they could, and Prince 
Hindal marched off his whole army without 
permission. Prince Kamran set out with a 
large force from Kabul, professedly to sup- 
port the emperor, but in reality to seize the 
throne if he could do so. 

Humayun was forced to retreat towards 
Agra, and to fight a battle with Sher-Shah 
in which he was disastrously defeated (a.d. 
1539). His queen was captured, and his 
army totally dispersed. The three brothers 
met at Agra and were reconciled, and a plan 
of defence was concerted. It is no part of 
my intention to recite the events of the next 
campaign (1540), which ended in the com- 
plete success of Sher-Shah (who became 
emperor of India) ; in the capture of Delhi 
and Agra ; and in the flight of the emperor 
and princes to Lahore. 

At Lahore another council was held. " It 
was abundantly manifest to the emperor," 
says one of the native historians, " that there 
was no possibility of bringing his brothers 



I04 The Mogul Emperors 

and his emirs to any agreement, and he was 
very despondent." 

Prince Hindal marched away in one direc- 
tion ; Prince Kamran " proved faithless," and 
set off for Kabul. " His brothers then began 
to shoot the arrows of discord at the target 
of sovereignty," as the native chronicler has 
it. Humayun now cast about for a place to 
set up what remained of his state. Sind, the 
province just south of Kabul, had been part 
of Timur's conquests, and whatever Timur 
had overrun belonged to any of his descend- 
ants who could take and keep it ; so the 
emperor set out for Sind with the remnants 
of his army. On his way he stopped at the 
camp of Prince Hindal, where he became vio- 
lently and suddenly enamoured of the young 
daughter of Hindal's instructor. Sheikh AH 
Akbar Jami. She was but fourteen years 
old, and had been promised in marriage, 
though not yet betrothed. The emperor 
decided to marry her at once. Though she 
was not of suitable rank, her father was 
a seiyad, a descendant of the Prophet 
Muhammad, and the family was distin- 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan 105 

guished for learning and piety. The mar- 
riage took place the next day. 

But Prince Hindal's camp was no place for 
the head of the state. 

" Te7t dervishes can sleep on one rug, but 
the same climate of the earth cannot contai^i 
two kings!' 

Accordingly Humayun plunged into the 
deserts of Sind, relying on the promises of 
one of his vassals there, which were not 
redeemed. During this desert march the 
party was reduced to the greatest straits, 
living on berries, lacking water, and harassed 
by enemies. At the solitary castle of Amerkot, 
in the midst of the desert, the empress gave 
birth to her son Akbar (October 15, 1542). 

The emperor was encamped some miles 
distant when the news was brought to him. 
He had no rich presents to give to the mes- 
senger and to his little party, as was custom- 
ary. He opened a single pod of musk, and 
distributed the contents among his faithful 
adherents. The child was named Jalalu-d- 
din Muhammad Akbar — king of kings — and 
like the odor of the musk his fame spread 



io6 The Mogul Emperors 

throughout the habitable world, according to 
the loyal wishes of the little band of the 
emperor's followers. 

Kandahar was held by Mirza-Askari as 
a dependent of Prince Kamran. It was 
now Humayun's intention to win Askari to 
his cause, and to find an asylum there. 
When he was some one hundred and thirty 
miles from the city, intelligence came that his 
brother the Mirza was marching: against him 
with hostile intent, and that he must fly for 
safety. This he did in such haste that the 
infant Akbar had to be left in the camp with 
most of the party. Humayun, with the 
queen and a band of only forty others, fled 
to Persia. Akbar and those who were left 
behind were well treated by the Mirza, and 
removed to Kandahar, and the child was 
sent to Kabul. As Mirza-Askari and his 
troops were returning with the young Akbar, 
one of the emperor's faithful adherents 
plotted to steal the child from its captors and 
to return him to his parents. The project 
was discussed with the guards, and it was 
decided that Humayun must have had good 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan 107 

reasons for leaving his infant son in his 
brother's hands, and that it would not be 
right either for the guards to give him up, 
or for the emperor's immediate followers to 
interfere with plans not fully understood. 
Upon this the warrior approached Akbar's 
litter, and received from the chief in charge 
of the escort a little fillet, or ribbon, from the 
child's turban. And with this pledge from 
one grim warrior to another, he set out to 
join the fortunes of the flying emperor, and 
to bring him the last news of the young 
prince. These are not the savage manners 
of barbarians. 

For three years the emperor had been in 
Sind, exposed to every hardship. He now 
set out for Persia to ask the help of Shah 
Tahmasp, the hereditary friend of his family. 
His reception was on a grand scale, and all 
kinds of promises were made on both sides. 
Humayun agreed to restore Kandahar to 
Persia, and was obliged to conform to the 
observances of the SJiia^ sect of Muhamma- 

* His great ancestor Timur was a Shia; though I do not find 
that this argument was used to change his beliefs. 



io8 The Mogul Emperors 

dans in return for the assistance of a well- 
equipped army of twelve thousand Persian 
troops. 

On the envelope of the letter which 
Humayun despatched to the Shah, he 
wrote these verses : 

Much hath this aching head endured among the waters, 
Much among the rocks and mountains , 
And much atnong the sands of the desert ; 
But all (these sorrows now) are past. 

Many more sorrows still remained to him, 
however, before his fortunes were retrieved. 
His was a life of constant vicissitude ; 

In the morning he dwelt in a house like Paradise or Heaven, 
In the evening he had no longer a dwelling. 
As if he had been homeless. 

Prince Kamran was reigning in Kabul. 
Kandahar had been in his possession ; had 
been captured from him by his brother 
Prince Hindal ; had been recaptured ; and 
was now held by Mirza-Askari. The fourth 
brother was marching against it at the head 
of a foreign army. The city was taken after 
a siege. Askari was pardoned, but he 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustani 109 

escaped, was recaptured, and imprisoned, 
and Kandahar was delivered over to the 
Persians. 

As the winter came on, Humayun's troops 
needed shelter, and as the Persian prince In 
command opportunely died, the emperor re- 
captured Kandahar, from the Persians this 
time, and made it his headquarters. He 
at once made a winter's march to Kabul. 
Prince Hindal joined the successful army, 
and Prince Kamran abandoned his capital 
and fled ; all his forces coming over to the 
emperor. The young Prince Akbar (now 
about three years old) was restored to his 
father. After a few months Humayun set 
out on an expedition against Badakshan 
(another one of Timur's conquests) ; there- 
upon Kamran returned and again captured 
Kabul and the young Akbar with it. The 
forces of Humayun and Hindal immediately 
returned and closely invested the city. The 
native writers say : " Kamran, with dastardly 
feeling, ordered that the prince Akbar should 
be exposed upon the battlements where the 
balls and shot of the guns and muskets fell 



no The Mogul Emperors 

thickest. But Allah Almighty preserved 
him." Kamran was obliged to fly once 
more, and Badakshan now fell into his hands, 
but was recaptured by the emperor in 1548. 
On this occasion Kamran became the pris- 
oner of Humayun and Hindal. 

" The emperor displayed the greatest 
kindness to Kamran, who again received the 
emblems of sovereignty." Mirza-Askari was 
set at liberty at this time, and the four 
brothers ate bread and salt together in sign 
of amity. In a few months, however, Kam- 
ran and Askarl again rebelled, and Kabul was 
again taken by them, and the prince Akbar 
(a precious hostage) again fell into their 
hands. Once more the emperor attacked 
Kabul, and once more Kamran was obliged 
to fly. 

These successive raids, sieges, captures, 
flights, read like the annals of a band of Sioux. 
They represent to the life the history of the 
Moguls before they were permanently estab- 
lished in India. Such " history " is intoler- 
ably monotonous and dull, and we are apt to 
dismiss it with the thought that all this was 



Hiimayun, Emperor of Hindustan 1 1 1 

four centuries ago, among barbarous tribes of 
Turkistan. But the wars in Europe at the 
same epoch, were they materially different ? 
We forget that modern war began with 
Napoleon's campaigns. And as to the bar- 
barous tribes — do we not find almost exact 
parallels in the cruel revolutions in South 
American States even to-day ? In Chile ? 
In the Argentine ? In Brazil ? In Hondu- 
ras ? There are no prisoners taken. The 
corpses of the dead are terribly mutilated. 
The captured cities are looted, and their 
inhabitants inhumanly outraged. 

It was about this time that Humayun 
wrote to Kamran to beg him to put an 
end to their eternal wars. " Oh, my unkind 
brother," he says, " what are you doing ? 
For every murder that is committed on either 
side, you will have to answer at the day of 
judgment. Come and make peace, that man- 
kind may be no more oppressed by our quar- 
rels." 

Kamran's answer was the verse : 

He who would obtain sovereignty for his bride, 
Must woo her across the edge of the sharp sword. 



112 The Mogul Emperors 

And the wars went on. Breaking into 
rebellion and ravaging provinces " was an old 
failing in the family of the Emir Timur," 
says one of the native historians. 

Hindal was sent to capture Kamran, and 
could have done so, but furthered his escape, 
and shortly afterwards was himself killed in 
a battle against the Afghans under Kam- 
ran's command. Mirza-Askari was ordered 
into banishment, and afterwards made the 
pilgrimage to Mecca, and died (1558) when 
just beyond Damascus. 

It was obvious that no terms could be 
made with Prince Kamran. He was finally 
captured, deprived of sight, and he also made 
the pilgrimage and afterwards died at Mecca, 

(1557). 

Prince Kamran was of a sullen and cruel 
nature, though bold and enterprising. He 
inspired no permanent attachment in his 
officers, or apparently in any one, save his 
unfortunate wife, who followed him into 
exile. "You gave me to my husband," said 
she to her father, "when he was a king and 
happy, and would take me from him now 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan 1 1 3 

that he is fallen and blind and miserable ; 
no, I will attend him faithfully wherever he 
goes." 

At the siege of Kabul he murdered the 
three young children of one of Humayun's 
officers, and threw their mangled bodies 
over the walls to the besiegers. He gave 
the wife of the same nobleman to the rabble 
in the bazaar to be dishonored. These acts 
were not only atrocious in themselves, but 
they were totally contrary to the customs of 
war. 

There is no doubt that the emperor loved 
him and all his brothers with a sincere affec- 
tion in spite of treacheries beyond count. 

When Kamran presented himself before 
the throne to make his submission (one of 
his submissions), he approached humbly with 
a whip hung around his neck. "Alas ! alas !" 
said the emperor, "there is no need of this ; 
throw it away." 

As soon as the ceremony of prostration 
was over, the emperor exclaimed : " What is 
past is past. Thus far we have conformed 
to ceremony. Let us now meet as brothers ; " 



114 '^^^^ Mogul Emperors 

and embracing him with tears, the emperor 
made him sit by his side in the place of 
honor. And then, in a moment, addressing 
him in Turki (as it were the private speech 
for two descendants of Timiir), he said, " Sit 
close to me," as if they had been little boys 
once more. 

When Prince Hindal was slain by the 
Afghans under Kamran, the emperor's camp 
was on a hill above Hindal's. After the fight 
was over, Humayun asked for his brother, 
but " no one had the courage to tell him " 
that he had been killed. The emperor 
stood on the little hill in the darkness, 
and called aloud for Hindal, and sent two 
different messengers to find him. When he 
at last learned his brother's fate, he was 
overwhelmed with grief, and shut himself up 
in his tent One of the high nobles found 
the emperor in tears, and asked the cause. 
" Have you not heard of the martyrdom of 
Mirza Hindal?" The chief had the bold- 
ness and good sense to reply : "You lament 
your own gain ; you have one enemy the 
less " — which was true indeed. 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan 115 

The last rebellion of Prince Kamran, and 
his atrocious conduct at the siege of Kabul, 
had made it clear that he deserved no mercy, 
and that the safety of the state demanded 
his death. The emperor's councillors were 
unanimously of this opinion, and they pre- 
sented a formal written petition and remon- 
strance, begging that justice be done. 

The emperor would not consent, partly 
from his affection for his turbulent and 
treacherous brother, partly from memory of 
his promise to his dying father. Kamran was 
placed in strict custody, and the next morn- 
ing orders were given that his eyes should 
be lanced to deprive him of sight, though not 
of life. Only so would he be harmless. This 
was in 1553, after Kamran had been in re- 
bellion more or less constantly for twenty- 
three years. The emperor's orders were 
received and executed. Some time after- 
wards Kamran sent to beg for an interview. 
"At midnight the emperor, lighted by a 
lantern, and attended by five or six men of 
distinction, repaired to Kamran's tent." The 
emperor sat down and sobbed aloud as the 



1 1 6 The Mogul Emperors 

blinded Mirza was led In. He called Allah 
to witness how little affairs had turned out 
according to his wishes, and how deeply he 
felt for his brother's sufferings. 

"The Mirza inquired who were in the tent. 
He was told Mir Tardi Beg, Monaim Beg, 
Bapus Beg (whose children he had slain), and 
some others ; on which he addressed them 
and said : * Be all of you witnesses that what- 
ever has happened to me has proceeded from 
my own misconduct and fault.' Humayun, 
much affected, and wishing to put an end to 
the scene, his voice interrupted by convulsive 
sorrow, faltered out : ' Let us now repeat the 
Fateheh.' * The Mirza, upon this, earnestly 
recommended his children to the emperor's 
care, who said : ' Set yourself at ease upon 
that subject ; they are my own children.' " f 

* The opening of the Kuran — a prayer. It reads as follows : 

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, 
The Compassionate, the Merciful, 
King of the day of Judgment I 
Thee we worship, and Thee we ask for help. 
Guide us in the straight •way. 
The vjay of those to whom Thou art gracious : 
Not of those upon whom is Thy wrath, nor of the erring.' 
f Summarized from Erskine's Life of Humayun, Chapter III, 
Book v. 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan 117 

For the first time in the emperor s reign it 
was possible for him to undertake operations 
in the field without fearing the treachery of his 
own brothers. His previous failures are attrib- 
uted by (foreign) historians to the levity and 
weakness of his character. All accounts seem 
to me to make it clear that, if he had not obeyed 
his father's admonitions to be kind to his rival 
brothers, if he had done as his successors did 
— if he had promptly put them to death — he 
would have been called a successful ruler ; 
cruel to his brothers, perhaps, but kind to all 
the world besides. He was often more than 
kind, even magnanimous and great-hearted. 

Saif-Khan had once held his whole army 
in check for half a day, while his over-lord, 
Sher-Khan, was making good his escape 
through a mountain defile. He was finally 
captured and brought to the emperor, bleed- 
ing from three wounds, and expecting death. 
The emperor said: "Such it behooves a soldier 
to be ; who should lay down his life to advance 
his master's cause. I set you free ; go wher- 
ever you choose." Saif answered, " My fam- 
ily is with Sher-Khan ; I wish to go to him." 



1 1 8 The Mogul Emperors 

Now, Sher-Khan was a thorn in the side of 
the Moguls, but Humayun did not hesitate. 
" I have given you your Hfe ; do as you will." 

Humayun had a strain of romance in his 
character, like that of the caliphs who granted 
favors to poets for their verses, to singers for 
their songs. " Ask a boon of me." 

The following incident, which occurred dur- 
ing the reign of his father, is an excellent 
example of the romantic impulse and respect 
for learning which are parts of the Oriental 
character : A town had been captured, and 
the soldiers sought everywhere for gold 
and plunder. " A party of three entered my 
house," says Maulana Sadu-lla, " and seized 
my father (who, in studying and teaching 
the sciences for sixty-five years, had, in the 
evening of his life, lost his sight) and made 
him prisoner. Others came and bound me, 
and sent me as a present to the Mirza 
(Shah Husain). The Wazir was sitting on 
a platform when I reached his house, and 
ordered me to be bound with a chain, one 
end of which was tied to the platform. I 
did not grieve for myself, but shed tears 



Humayun, Emperor of Hindustan 119 

for my father's sad condition." The Wazir 
asked for writing materials, and mended 
his pen to write, but was called away, leaving 
no one in the place but the captive. 

** I approached the platform, and wrote, on 
the very paper on which the Wazir intended 
to write, these verses : 

Do not your eyes see hotv I am weeping, 
And do you never say, weep no more? 
And does your heart never suggest to you 
That you should have pity upon me ? " 

When the Wazir returned he found the 
writing, released the poet, robed him in a 
garment of his own, and introduced him to 
the Mirza himself, who set the father free, 
and restored their goods to the two prison- 
ers, dismissing them both with honor. 

Everything was now favorable for the re- 
conquest of India. In 1555 the emperor 
set out from Kabul with fifteen thousand 
horse, invaded the Panjab, captured Lahore 
from the Afghans, and took possession of 
Delhi and Agra. Successful battles, in which 
the Prince Akbar took part, confirmed him 
in the possession of Hindustan. He died 



I20 The Mogul Efitperors 

from the effects of a fall in 1556, half a year 
after his return to Delhi, and Akbar (then 
thirteen years old) reigned in his place. 

In this last invasion Humayun made a vow 
that, if Providence restored the sovereignty 
of India to him, he would never again make 
slaves of true believers. He was fighting 
against Afghans, who were Musulmans, and 
had no scruple in making a pyramid of 
their heads, in the fashion of Timur the 
Tartar, but he did not enslave them. This 
last pyramid of heads was erected seven- 
teen years before the Massacre of Saint 
Bartholomew. 

The success of the first battle for the 
reconquest of India was splendid ; but it 
produced no change in the equanimity of 
Humayun's mind. He had always endeav- 
ored, he said, to observe three principles of 
conduct : first of all, integrity of design ; 
then, energy in action ; and, finally, modera- 
tion in success ; ascribing all the glory to 
an overruling Providence, and nothing to the 
merits of man. 

A very curious chapter might be written 



Humayun, Emperor of HindiLstan 121 

concerning the dreams of the emperors, as 
recounted in their Memoirs. Putting to one 
side those architecturally elaborate dreams, 
" I saw an eagle descend from the empy- 
rean and devour a dove, etc.," which are 
announced by the emperor at his Durbar, 
so that the astrologers may expound them 
to mean that he is the eagle, and his enemy 
the dove,* — putting these aside, there still 
remain to us a considerable number of evi- 
dently genuine dreams. 

We must regard Babar's account of his 
dream of the flower-gardens as entirely 
genuine. He recounts it with real pleasure 
years afterwards. And what a lovely light it 
throws on his thoughts ! In the Memoirs 
of Timur there are several cases of dreams 
meant to be interpreted in public ; but there 
is one case which seems to me to be entirely 
real, and to give a glimpse into the monarch's 
secret mind. He is recounting his " holy 
war against the infidel Kators" (May, 1398, 
A.D.). After days of fighting and extreme 

* Such, for example, as the dreams of Olympias, mother of 
Alexander the Great, just before his birth. 



122 The Mogul Emperors 

fatigue in the mountains, Timur sleeps, and 
dreams — what ? "I dreamed that my sword 
was bent." When he awakes, this dream, like 
others, must be expounded. " I interpreted 
it to be a certain token that Burhan Aghlan 
had been defeated." As a matter of fact he 
had been ; but it is clear, I think, that the 
dream itself was true, and not a fabrication 
intended to convey the idea that Timur was 
inspired. Here is a small but genuine psychic 
event. " I dreamed that my sword was bent." 
Humayun, too, had dreams de cir Constance 
— official dreams, meant to be interpreted in 
his favor. It is related also that he had a 
supernatural warning of his death in a dream. 
He himself says : " I lately rose after mid- 
night to say the stated prayers and retired 
again to rest ; when just before dawn, as I 
was lying, my eyes shut, but my heart awake, 
I heard a supernatural voice clearly repeat 
these verses : 

Oh, Lordy of Thine infinite goodness tJiake me Thine own ; 
Oh, call to Thee thy poor lover; Oh, grant nie my release," 

He repeated these verses frequently, with 



Htimayun, Emperor of Hindtistan 1 23 

deep emotion ; and it was not long after- 
wards that he met his death by an accident. 

Nizamu-d-din-Ahmad was the son of a 
favorite noble of Babar's and Humayun's 
court. His history is a standard one, and his 
estimate of the emperor is at least that of 
an intelligent observer, who had the fullest 
opportunity for judgment.''^* Omitting a few 
adjectives of convention, there is no reason 
to doubt that his writing is sincere. He says : 
" Humayun reigned for more than twenty- 
five years, and he was fifty-one years of age 
when he died. His angelic character was 
adorned with every manly virtue, and in cour- 
age he excelled all the princes of the time. 
All the wealth of Hindustan would not have 
sufficed to have maintained his generosity. 
In the sciences of astrology and mathe- 
matics he was unrivalled. He made good 
verses, and all the learned and great and 
good of the time were admitted to his so- 

* He came into high favor with the Emperor Akbar by marching 
his men twelve hundred miles in twelve days, so as to be present at 
the celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of his coronation at 
Lahore, 



124 ^-^^ Mogul Emperors 

ciety, and passed the night in his company. 
The Hght of favor shone on men of abiHty 
and worth during his reign. Such was his 
clemency that he repeatedly pardoned the 
rebellions of his brother, Mirza Kamran, when 
he was taken prisoner and was in his power. 
He was devout and ceremonious in all re- 
lip;ious observances." 

His "weary indecision" was manifested 
chiefly in the early part of his reign, and then 
only in counsel. He was always prompt and 
brave in action, as became a descendant of 
Amir Timur. Of Timur we may say what 
Saint-Simon says of Peter the Great : " Tout 
montrait en lui la vaste etendue de ses 
lumieres, et quelque chose de continuellement 
consequent." All the descendants of Timur 
were distinguished for personal valor — the 
courage of the heart. Some of them in- 
herited from their great ancestor that cour- 
age of the mind which made him capable 
of long, patient, unswerving devotion to a 
resolution once formed. But Humayun was 
not one of his heirs in this respect. Valor 
he had, but he was deficient in resolution. 



Hiimayun, Emperor of Hindustan 125 

Erskine, the author of a Life of Humayun, 
has given another estimate of his character, 
which I quote : 

•' He was a man of great quickness of parts, 
but volatile, thoughtless, and unsteady. His 
disposition was naturally generous, friendly, 
and affectionate ; his manners polite, frank, 
and winning. His generosity finally degen- 
erated into prodigality, his attachments into 
weakness, and hence to the day of his death 
he was the prey of flatterers and favorites. 
He was fond of literature, and delighted in 
the society of the learned. He was a writer of 
verses,* and had made, it is said, considerable 
progress in mathematics and astronomy. At 
the time of his death he was about to con- 
struct an observatory, and had already col- 
lected the necessary instruments." '' He was 
a good Musulman, rigid in the observance of 
the stated prayers and of the ceremonial of 
the law." *'But though he was brave and 
good-tempered, liberal, and fond of learning, 
his virtues all bordered on neighboring de- 
fects, and produced little fruit." 

* As was his brother Hindal also. 



126 The Mogul Emperors 

His father, Babar, has also left us a judg- 
ment of him. For a long time Humayun 
lived at the court and shared in every detail 
of government, and was the inseparable asso- 
ciate of the emperor, who was never tired of 
repeating that, as a companion, Humayun had 
not his equal in the whole habitable world. 
He was the very flower of humanity and 
courtesy. His affection for his father was 
genuine and sincere. In the forty-sixth year 
of his age he transcribed Babar's Memoirs 
with his own hand, adding a commentary of 
his own. 

He was uniformly kind and considerate to 
his dependents, devotedly attached to his son 
Akbar, to his friends, and to his turbulent 
brothers. The misfortunes of his reign arose, 
in great part, from his failure to treat them 
with rigor. But we are obliged to esteem 
him for this long-suffering consideration, 
for it was the faithful fulfilment of his prom- 
ise to his dying father. 

The very defects of his character, which 
render him less admirable as a successful ruler 
of nations, make us more fond of him as a 



Humaytm, Emperor of Hindustan 127 

man. His renown has suffered in that his 
reign came between the brilHant conquests 
of Babar and the beneficent statesmanship 
of Akbar ; but he was not unworthy to be 
the son of the one and the father of the 
other. 



128 The Mogul Emperors 



CHAPTER IV 

SHAH AKBAR THE GREAT, EMPEROR OF 
HINDUSTAN (a.D. I556-1605) 

The book of the Thousand Nights and a 
Night begins with these words : " Verily the 
works and words of those gone before us have 
become instances and examples to men of 
our modern day, that folk may view what 
admonishing chances befel other folk, and 
may therefrom take warning ; and that they 
may peruse the annals of antique peoples, 
and all that hath betided them, and be 
thereby ruled and restrained. Praise there- 
fore be to Allah who hath made the histories 
of the Past an admonition unto the Present." 
The works and words of Akbar are worthy 
to be instances and examples and even 
admonitions unto the present. 

By command of the Emperor Akbar his 
wazir, Abul-fazl, wrote the history of his life, 






\. 



Shah Akbar the Great 129 

and also a monumental book treating of the 
government and statistics of the kingdom.* 

It is possible from this work to obtain a 
lively picture of the Empire of the Moguls 
at the height of its splendor, and the charac- 
ter of its enlightened monarch is set forth in 
the laws and customs which he prescribed. 
Abul-fazl's style abounds in smooth flattery, 
which seems offensive to a Western reader 
chiefly because it is addressed to a king — 
and kings are out of date. It is no more 
fulsome, however, than the address of a 
candidate for Parliament or Congress to the 
voters, his masters. As reasonable people 
disregard the latter sort of flattery, so we 
may also discount the former. I have, there- 
fore, omitted most of the eulogistic passages 
in Abul-fazl's book, as they are merely con- 
ventional, and have but little genuine signifi- 
cance. 

*This volume, the Ain-i-Akbari, has been twice translated : 
by Francis Gladwin (1800) and by Professor Blochmann (1873). The 
edition of 1873 is supplemented by a series of notes, so elaborate, 
so interesting, so learned, as to give the work of Abul-fazl a 
double title to be regarded as one of the world's great books. I 
have quoted from both translations in this chapter. 
9 



130 The Mogul Emperors 

Akbar was the son of Humayun, and came 
to the throne in 1556. He died in 1605, 
after a reign of nearly fifty years. The 
history of his wars and conquests is far less 
interesting than the picture of his civil 
ofovernment, 

Abul-fazl's book enables us to trace the 
finger of the monarch in every detail of 
the administration of a vast and well-ordered 
empire which extended from Persia to the 
Ganges, and from Cashmere to the Deccan. 
A glance at the table of contents gives 
the following chapter-headings among many : 
The Household ; the Royal Treasuries ; the 
Jewel Office ; the Mint ; the Harem ; the 
Equipage for Journeys ; Regulations for 
the Encampment of the Army ; Ensigns of 
Royalty ; Perfume Office ; Painting Gallery ; 
Artillery ; Stables for Elephants, Horses, 
Camels, Oxen ; Regulations for the Public 
Fights of Animals ; Regulations for Teaching 
in the Public Schools ; Revenue Department ; 
Particular Account of Each One of the Fifteen 
Provinces Governed by Viceroys ; Rent-roll 
of the Empire; Religious Toleration ; Descrip- 



Shah Akbar the Great 131 

tion of Hindustan — its Inhabitants — its Doc- 
trines — its Customs, etc., etc., etc., and a 
thousand things besides. 

" It is universally agreed," says Abul-fazl, 
" that the noblest employments are the 
reformation of the manners of the people, 
the advancement of agriculture, the regula- 
tion of the offices, and the discipline of the 
army ; and these desirable ends are not to 
be attained without studying to please the 
people, joined with good management of 
the finances and exact economy in the ex- 
penses of the state ; but when these are kept 
in view, every class of people enjoys prosperity !' 

What an immense chanee of ideal this 
paragraph denotes from that of Timur, 
Akbar's ancestor ! The prosperity of the 
people ! Compare this with the terrible 
marches and sieges of Timur, each marked 
with its pyramids of human heads. The 
advance of agriculture ! This is the ideal 
of the descendant of those Turki warriors 
who jeered at wheat, calling it " the top of 
a weed." 

The emperor appointed treasurers for 



132 The Mogul Emperors 

each department, who kept daily, monthly, 
quarterly, and yearly accounts. Diamonds 
and other jewels belonging to the crown 
were valued and classed; pearls were strung 
in scores, and at the end of each string the 
seal was affixed, that they might not be un- 
sorted or stolen. Each ruby of price bore 
the inscription, "The magnificent ruby." 
These jewels cannot all be lost. Are any 
of Akbar's rubies in European collections 
to-day ? A mint with fixed regulations and 
with paid officials was established, and rules 
for the fineness of the precious metals were 
laid down.* Light coins were received 
according to established discounts. " Every 
money matter will be satisfactorily settled, 
when the parties express their minds clearly, 

* Among his jewellers was an Englishman, Mr. William Leades. 
The king "entertained him very well, gave him a house and five 
slaves, a horse, and every day six shillings in money." Leades' 
history is curious. He was one of four Englishmen who travelled 
from Syria and Persia to India in 1583, bearing letters from Queen 
Elizabeth to the Great Mogul. After many adventures they came 
to very different ends. One of the company (Storey) became a 
monk at Goa ; Leades entered Akbar's service ; Newberry died on 
the journey home ; and Fitch returned to England in 1591, and 
published an account of his voyages. 



Shah Akbar the Great 133 

then take a pen, and write down the state- 
ment in legible handwriting." As we read 
these paragraphs we do not seem to be in 
the middle ages, until, by accident, we see 
that "metals are formed of vapor and exha- 
lation, which is to be particularly learned 
from books of natural philosophy." Akbar 
brouorht his coins to a fixed standard of 
purity and improved their shape. They 
were weighed against standard agate weights. 
One of them bore for a legend : 

The best coin is that which is etuployed in supplying men with 
the necessaries of life, and which benefits the companions in the road 
of God. 

Special coinage alloys were invented by 
Akbar himself, who experimented in all 
departments from religion to metallurgy. 
Minute rules prescribed how the betting 
on deer-fights should be conducted ; and 
" the leanness of elephants was divided into 
thirteen classes,"— to see if their food had 
been stolen. 

Akbar inherited his desire for classifying 
and organizing everything from his father 



134 ^'^^ Mogttl Emperors 

Humayun, in whom the systematic tendency 
was strongly developed, but whose vagabond 
life did not permit him to carry out his ten- 
dencies to the full. Humayun in the begin- 
ning of his reign divided all his people into 
three classes. The royal family, the nobles, 
the military chiefs, were the first class ; the 
religious hermits, the descendants of the 
Prophet, the literati, the law officers, the 
astronomers, and the poets, "besides other 
great and respectable men," were the second 
class ; while those who were young and 
lovely, the singers and musicians, were the 
third. The occupations of the days of the 
week were apportioned to these three classes, 
two days to each class, etc. The more serious 
occupation of guarding his kingship, and 
even his life, soon broke up this artificial and 
rather silly scheme, of which I have given 
but a very small part. 

Abul-fazl writes thus (feelingly) of the 
Harem, or Seraglio: "There is, in general, 
great inconvenience arising from a number of 
women ; but his majesty, out of the abun- 
dance of his wisdom and prudence, has made 



Shah Akbar the Great 135 

it subservient to public advantage ; for by 
contracting marriages with the daughters of 
the princes of Hindustan and of other coun- 
tries, he secures himself against insurrections 
at home, and forms powerful alliances abroad.''^' 
The harem is an enclosure of such immense 
extent as to contain a separate room for each 
one of the women, whose number exceeds 
five thousand. They are divided into com- 
panies, and a proper employment is assigned 
to each individual. Over each of these com- 
panies a woman is appointed to rule. And 
one is selected for the care of the whole, in 
order that the affairs of the harem may be 
conducted with the same regularity as the 
other departments of the state." 

The harem was thus a state bureau ; its 
chief was Maham Anka, who had been Akbar's 
nurse and faithful attendant during the peril- 
ous adventures of his childhood, and who was, 

* It is often said that one of Akbar's wives was a Christian prin- 
cess. It is worth while to give this foot-note to a correction of the 
error. Of all the royal families of the proud Rajputs, one only, 
that of Oudipur, steadily rejected all marriages with the house of 
the Mogul conquerors, and to this day has kept its blood pure, 
according to the ancient Rajput customs. 



136 The Mogul Emperors 

in fact, his prime minister in the early years of 
his reign. 

" Each one receives a salary equal to her 
merit. The pen cannot measure the extent 
of the emperor's largesses ; but here shall be 
given some account of the monthly stipend of 
each. The ladies of the first quality receive 
from 1,610 rupees* down to 1,028 rupees. 
Some of the principal servants have from 
fifty-one down to twenty rupees, and others 
are paid from two rupees up to forty." 
"Whenever any of this multitude of women 
want anything, they apply to the treasurer." 
" The inside of the harem is guarded by 
women," and there were eunuchs, porters, and 
military guards at different distances outside, 
each in a prescribed position. 

The equipages for journeys and encamp- 
ments were as complex as a town. For it 
must be remembered that when the emperor 
moved from a city, the inhabitants moved 
with him ; merchants, families, servants, and 
slaves. The camp was simply the city under 
tents. 

* A rupee may be taken as about fifty-five cents in Akbar's time. 



Shah Akbar the Great 137 

Akbar had various seals. One bore his 
name alone ; another, the name of all of 
his ancestors up to Timur ; for petitions a 
seal was used with the inscription : 

Rectitude is the Jtieans of pleasing God. 

I never saw any one lost in the straight road. 

** His majesty even extends his attentions 
to the kitchen department, and has made many 
wise regulations concerning it. He eats but 
once in the course of twenty-four hours, and 
he always leaves off with an appetite. But 
what is required for the harem is going on 
from morning to night." " Trusty people are 
appointed to the kitchen department, and his 
majesty is not unwatchful of their conduct." 
In Babar's time an awning was spread over 
the kitchen to insure that poison should not 
be dropped from above, and all the cooking 
was done under guard. Moreover, attempts 
against the emperor's life were provided 
against by the appointment of tasters, and 
unmindful tasters were flayed alive ! The 
same precautions were taken by Akbar, and 
the dishes were sent from the kitchen in nap- 



138 The Mogul Emperors 

kins whose corners were fastened by a seal. 
" The copper utensils for his majesty's use are 
tinned twice a month ; those for the princes 
and the harem only once in that time." 
Everything was regulated in this kingdom of 
ordinances. Akbar drank only the waters of 
the Ganges, cooled with saltpetre. '' Salt- 
petre, which in the composition of gun-powder 
supplies heat, has been discovered by his 
majesty to be also productive of cold." ^' 

All the water for Akbar's use and all the 
provisions were kept in vessels under seal, 
and the magazines and gardens were guarded 
by trusty servants. This was necessary in a 
realm where treachery abounded, the classic 
land of poisons.f 

The receipts for thirty dishes are given by 
the wazir. I shall only quote one, for the 
benefit of young housekeepers. " Chickee. 

* The philosophy of Abul-fazl is like that of the little girl in 
Punch, who gazes at a tortoise, and remarks how passing strange it 
is that the animal which supplies her with her combs should possess 
so extremely little hair. 

f Ibn Batuta tells us that there was a special seal-bearer under 
Sultan Mahmud (a.d. 997-1030) whose duty it was to seal the 
water-jars used by that emperor. 



Shah Akbar the Great 139 

Ten pounds of wheat flour made into a paste 
and washed until it is reduced into two pounds ; 
one pound of clarified butter, and the same 
quantity of onions ; saffron, cardamoms, and 
cloves, each quarter of an ounce ; cinnamon, 
round pepper, and coriander seed, each half 
an ounce ; green ginger and salt, each an 
ounce and a half. Some add lemon juice." 

To the Western palate it seems indifferent 
whether the lemon were added or not. A 
hundred dishes was the usual memc for 
Akbar's dinner. " One day when his majesty 
was at dinner, it occurred to his mind that 
probably the eyes of some hungry one had 
fallen upon the food. How, therefore, could 
he eat it while the hungry were debarred from 
it ? He therefore gave orders that every day 
some hungry persons should be fed with 
some of the food prepared for himself, and 
that afterwards he should be fed." " His 
majesty has a great disinclination for flesh, 
and he frequently says, ' Providence has 
provided variety of food for man, but 
through gluttony and ignorance he destroys 
living creatures and makes his body a tomb 



140 The Mogul Emperors 

for beasts. If I were not a king I would 
leave off eating flesh at once, and now it 
is my intention to quit it by degrees.' " 
And in fact he always abstained from meat 
on two days in every week. Akbar was ex- 
ceedingly fond of fruit, and introduced many 
varieties from Persia and Tartary. The best 
muskmelons came from Tartary, and cost 
two and a half rupees each ; apples from 
Samarkand were ten for a rupee. 

"■ His majesty is exceedingly fond of per- 
fumes, and the presence-chamber is con- 
stantly scented with flowers, and fumigated 
with perfumes burned in gold and silver 
censers." His faithful minister gives many 
receipts for compounding scents. A long list 
is also given of the flowers of the country 
and of their seasons for blossoming. 

" Of Marriages : His majesty does not 
approve of every one marrying more than 
one wife. He censures old women who take 
young husbands. His majesty maintains that 
the consent of the bride and bridegroom, and 
the permission of the parents, are absolutely 
necessaryy This is almost inconceivably ad- 



Shah Akbar the Great 141 

vanced doctrine, when we remember the time 
and place. A consideration of the juvenile 
marriages of the Hindus had formed Akbar's 
opinions on this point. 

" Every day some capable person reads to 
his majesty, who hears every book from be- 
ginning to end. He always marks with the 
date of the month the place where he leaves 
off. There is hardly a work of science, of 
genius, or of history, but has been read to his 
majesty, and he is not tired of hearing them 
repeated, but always listens with great avid- 
ity." Many books were translated by his 
command, and a history of all parts of the 
world for the last thousand years was pre. 
pared by his order. Akbar applied to the 
Pope of Rome for a copy of the Pentateuch, 
having already in his possession, so he says, 
the Evangelists and the Psalms in Persian.'^* 

" All civilized nations have schools ; but 
Hindustan is particularly famous for its semi- 
naries." As in everything else in the empire, 
Akbar had improvements to suggest ; and 

* One of the Persian poets declares that the Psalms were origin- 
ally written by David in the Persian dialect ! (Ross's Saadi.) 



142 The Mogul Emperors 

" what used to take up years, is now accom- 
plished in a few months, to the astonishment 
of every one." " Every boy should read 
books on morals, arithmetic, agriculture, 
mensuration, geometry, astronomy, physiog- 
nomy, household matters, the rules of govern- 
ment, (theological, mathematical, and physi- 
cal) sciences, and history — all of which may 
be gradually acquired." 

" His majesty takes great delight in the 
painting-gallery, and having patronized this 
art from the beginning of his reign, has 
caused it to arrive at high perfection." 
Every week pictures were submitted to him 
and the artists rewarded. A list of the 
eighteen most eminent painters of his court 
is given. Books were illuminated also, and 
one (in twelve volumes) had no less than 
fourteen hundred illustrations. Portraits of 
all the chief officers were made, and bound in 
a volume " wherein the past are kept in lively 
remembrance, and the present are insured 
immortality." 

The library of his poet-laureate (the 
brother of Abul-fazl) contained forty-six 



Shah Akbar the Great 143 

hundred manuscripts, and Akbar's was far 
more complete. In Jahangir's time, the 
walls of the palace at Lahore were literally- 
covered with portraits and other pictures. 
Timur's picture gallery at Samarkand con- 
tained mural paintings of his battles in 
Hindustan. " There are many that hate 
painting," says Akbar, " but such men I dis- 
like. It appears to me as if a painter had 
quite peculiar means of recognizing God. 
For a painter in sketching anything that 
has life, and in devising its limbs, one after 
the other, must come to feel that he cannot 
bestow individuality upon his work, and is 
thus forced to think of God, the giver of 
life." 

In the year 1570 Akbar laid the founda- 
tions of his city Futtehpore-Sikri, near the 
residence of the Saint Selim Shisti, after 
whom his eldest son was named (Prince 
Selim, afterwards Jahangir). The site was 
not really suitable, and the city was aban- 
doned in 1584. Its ruins are to-day a 
wonder to travellers. The great fort at 
Agra was built by him also. If he had not 



144 T^^^ Mogul Emperors 

been succeeded by two kings with a passion 
for architecture, like Jahangir, and especially 
Shah Jahan, Akbar would have been famous 
as a builder also. There is a sober solidity 
to many of his constructions which renders 
them to-day at once imposing and character- 
istic. 

Particular rules were laid down for the 
manufacture of artillery and of small arms ; 
and all these pieces were tested by Akbar 
himself. It appears that with one single 
musket the emperor had killed nineteen hun- 
dred separate beasts — for in his hunting, as 
in everything else, he kept precise accounts. 
Each one of the emperor's private guns had 
its appropriate name. 

Abul-fazl's description of the elephants of 
India is most interesting, but it is far too long 
for quotation. It may be remarked that he 
says that the natural life of this beast, " like 
that of man," is one hundred and twenty years. 
It is noteworthy, too, that before Akbar's 
time it was considered unlucky to allow tame 
elephants to breed ; " but his majesty has sur- 
mounted this prejudice" — this superstition. 



Shah Akbar the Great 145 

" His majesty being very fond of horses, 
droves are constantly arriving, so that at this 
day there are in his stables twelve thousand 
horses." Akbar paid a salary to an official 
of his stables, whose business it was to burn 
a kind of mustard-seed to avert the evil eye. 
The express-service of the empire was done 
on swift camels, and not by horses. At every 
six miles on the principal routes a postman 
was stationed, and besides these "a grreat 
number of camel-riders are waiting in the 
palace for the purpose of carrying orders or 
messages, the instant they are ready to be 
despatched, to the most distant extent of 
the realm." 

" Whenever his majesty marches at the 
head of his army the road is carefully meas- 
ured, by means of bamboo rods, by persons 
appointed for that purpose. The units of 
measure were one gtcz (equal to about thirty- 
three inches), and one ci^ouh, which equals 
five thousand guz." The ancient definitions 
of these standard measures are worth quot- 
ing, that we may comprehend the necessity 
for some of the reforms of Akbar. In one 



146 The Mogul Emperors 

province the crouh, or standard measure, 
was " the greatest distance at which may be 
heard the ordinary lowing of an ox." In an- 
other, " a man is to pluck a green leaf, and, 
placing it upon his head, to walk with it until 
it becomes dry ; this distance, they say, is a 
crouh.'' I quote part of one of the tables 
given : 

" 6 hairs of a mule's tail . . . make one barleycorn. 

6 barley corns " one inch. 

24 inches " one guz." 

The ''barleycorn " of our old arithmetics 
makes its appearance here. 

" His majesty is exceedingly fond of music, 
and has a perfect knowledge of its principles. 
This art, which the generality of people use 
as the means of inducing sleep, serves to 
amuse him, and to keep him awake." 

The Emperor Babarwas not fond of Hin- 
dus, nor of Hindustan, as we have seen ; but 
Abul-fazl says : 

" Summarily the Hindus are religious, affa- 
ble, courteous to strangers, cheerful, enam- 
ored of knowledge, lovers of justice, given 
to retirement, able in business, grateful, 



SJiah Akbar the Great 147 

admirers of truth, and of unbounded fidelity 
in all their dealings. Their soldiers know not 
what it is to fly from the field of battle. 
They have great respect for their teachers, 
and make no account of their lives when 
they can devote them to the service of God." 
This unbounded panegyric ought to stand 
alone. Unfortunately, in another place, Abul- 
fazl expresses a different opinion ; he says : 
" In short, some have the disposition of 
angels, and others are demons. There are 
some who for the merest trifle will commit 
the greatest outrages." 

As Abul-fazl's work was to pass under the 
eye of the king, he improved the opportunity 
to give little moral lessons to inculcate an 
even temper, or to strengthen the position of 
good wazirs. There are many such pas- 
sages, of which I shall quote but one : 

" A wise prince never suffers himself to 
be led away by reports, but exercises his 
circumspection and makes diligent investiga- 
tion, seeing that truth is scarce and falsehood 
common ; and it behoveth him to be more 
especially doubtful of whatever is said to the 



148 The Mogul E?nperors 

prejudice of those whom he has distinguished 
by peculiar marks of his favor, as the world 
in general bears them enmity even without 
cause, and the wicked frequently put on the 
appearance of virtue to compass the destruc- 
tion of the innocent." But Akbar, though 
hasty in his temper, was faithful to his 
friends ; and his wazir, in particular, enjoyed 
his favor to his last day, and was sincerely 
mourned after his death. 

" The Maimer in which His Majesty spends 
His Time. 

" On this depends the welfare and happi- 
ness of all ranks of people. It is his majesty's 
constant endeavor to gain and secure the 
hearts of all men. Amidst a thousand cares, 
he suffers not his temper to be disturbed, 
but is always cheerful. He is ever striving 
to do that which is most acceptable to the 
Deity, and employs his mind on profound 
and abstract speculations. He listens to what 
every one has to say. He never suffers him- 
self to be led away by wrath. Others employ 
story-tellers to lull them to sleep, but his 



Shah Akbar the Great 149 

majesty, on the contrary, listens to them to 
keep himself awake. He exercises upon him- 
self both inward and outward austerities, and 
pays regard to external forms, in order to 
avoid cause for reproach. He never laughs 
at or ridicules any religion or sect ; * he never 
omits the performance of any duty. He is 
continually returning thanks unto Providence 
and scrutinizing his own conduct. He is 
ever sparing of the lives of offenders, wish- 
ing to bestow happiness upon all his subjects. 
His majesty is visible to everybody twice in 
the course of twenty-four hours. He often 
appears at an open window, and from thence 
receives petitions without the interventio7i of 
any person. He considers an equal distribu- 
tion of justice and the happiness of his sub- 
jects as essential to his own felicity." 

Making every allowance for the obsequious- 
ness and servility of an Oriental official, it is 
clear that Abul-fazl is here describing some- 
thing between the ideal which Akbar really 
set before himself, and the reality which he 

* This is by no means true, as the present chapter will abundantly 
show. 



150 The Mogul Emperors 

attained. The ideal was nearly the highest 
possible. Perhaps no ruler but Marcus 
Aurelius has had a higher one. The reality 
must be judged by the practical success of 
his plans. I do not know that many West- 
ern rulers have surpassed him, and certainly 
no Oriental monarch has come near to this 
excellence.* 

What, then, in fact, should a benevolent 
and wise ruler do for his subjects ? The acts 
of Akbar's government might almost be taken 
for a model of practice, just as Timur's Insti- 
tutes are admirable theory. He surveyed the 

* Sher-Shah, the Afghan king who drove Humayun from Hin- 
dustan, and whose dynasty was in its turn overthrown by Akbar, 
seems to have originated very many of the administrative reforms 
which are usually credited to Akbar ; but he was far behind him in 
religious toleration. Akbar was fortunate in having a great min- 
ister of finance, Rajah Todar Mai, who had learned his business 
under Sher-Shah, Abul-fazl says of him, that "for honesty, recti- 
tude, manliness, knowledge of business, and administrative skill, 
he was without a rival." Two of Akbar's advisers, then, were men 
of the very highest ability, and one of them, Abul-fazl, a wonder- 
fully liberal and elevated statesman. Mr. Horace Hayman Wilson, 
in Mill's /«^2(Z, declares explicitly: "Whatever merit there may 
have been in the financial arrangements of Akbar, it belonged to 
the Hindus " — that is, essentially to Rajah Todar Mai. It required 
a great king to utilize such ministers. 



Shah Akbar the Great 151 

land and divided it into classes. He equalized 
the taxes. In times of famine and distress 
he partly or totally remitted them. " His 
majesty abolished all arbitrary taxes. He 
fixed standard measures ; after which he ascer- 
tained the value of the lands, and fixed the 
revenue accordingly." The duties on manu- 
factures were reduced one-half (to five per 
cent.). The complicated and unjust systems 
of official fees were either totally abolished 
or much simplified, and the officials were 
usually paid by the state, instead of extorting 
for themselves what the peasants could give 
and yet exist. Full statistics were collected, 
and the imposts were then fixed for a period 
of ten years. In a thousand ways the affairs 
of the state were settled on a definite basis of 
law, instead of on shifting caprice. There is 
no space to present the details of these enact- 
ments. Perhaps the quickest method of 
exhibiting them will be to give brief extracts 
from the " instructions for the officers." 
These were the actual rules by which the 
empire was administered, at least during the 
latter part of the reign. 



152 The Mogul Emperors 

The Viceroy. — " He must constantly keep 
in view the happiness of the people ; he shall 
not take away life until after the most mature 
deliberation ; those who apply for justice, let 
them not be afflicted with delay ; let him 
accept the excuse of the penitent ; let the 
roads be made safe ; let him consider it his 
duty to befriend the industrious husbandman." 

The Cazi (judge). — " Divesting himself of 
partiality and avarice, let him distinguish the 
oppressor from the oppressed, and act accord- 
ingly." 

The Cootwal (a kind of provost-marshal). — 
" His own conduct must be upright and 
strictly honest ; the idle he shall oblige to 
learn some trade ; upon coins short of weight 
he shall take exactly the deficiency (and no 
more) ; he shall prohibit the drinking of 
spirituous liquors, but need not take pains to 
discover what men do in secret ; he shall not 
allow a widow to be burned contrary to her 
inclinations." 

The Collector of the Revemies. — " He must 
consider himself the immediate friend of the 
husbandman ; he must not require any inter- 



Shah Akbar the Great 153 

mediary ; he must assist the needy husband- 
man with loans of money, and receive payment 
at distant and convenient periods ; he must 
reward skilful management ; let him see that 
his demands do not exceed his agreements ; 
let him collect the revenue wnth kindness ; 
vexatious taxes must not be exacted." 

These extracts are but specimens of the 
formal and elaborate Instructions given to 
the officials. The originals of some of these 
documents exist to-day. There is reason to 
believe that they were obeyed in a great 
degree. At all events, they certainly repre- 
sent the ideal towards which this monarch 
strove. 

His life covered the years a.d. 1542- 
1605. Caesar Borgia was but just dead. 
The horrors of the sack of Rome had 
endured for seven months of the year 1527. 
Elizabeth of England reigned from 1558 to 
1603. The very first English book of any 
scientific value (Robert Recorde's Arith- 
metic) was printed in 1540. The Massacre 
of St. Bartholomew was in 1572. The 
Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588. 



154 ^-^^ Mogul Emperors 

Shakespeare's first poem was printed in 
1593. Jordano Bruno was burned in Rome 
in 1600. The first treatise on the law of 
nations, and the Habeas Corpus Act were 
nearly a century later. Witches were exe- 
cuted in England until 171 2, and were 
burned in France till 1718 ; in Spain, till 
1780. Luther {circa 1530) had personal 
encounters with the devil. When Blaise 
Pascal was a year old he was bewitched, and 
only rescued by the application of a plaster 
made from herbs plucked before sunrise, by 
a virgin of seven years, and bruised down 
with the blood of a cat belonging to the 
sorceress (1621). Kepler's aunt was burned 
as a witch, and he had the greatest dif^culty 
in saving his mother from the same fate 
(1620) ; Kepler himself, the leading man of 
science in central Europe, declared that the 
reality of witchcraft could not be denied. He 
died in 1630. Russia, France, Spain, Italy, 
Germany, were no better governed than 
India. It might very well be debated if 
the actual condition of the English people 
was to be preferred to that of the Hindus 



Shah Akbar the Great 155 

of the central provinces under the compara- 
tively mild rule of Akbar.* 

Akbar was but little over thirteen years 
of age when he ascended the throne. From 
this time until he was eighteen, he remained 
under the tutelage of a great noble, Bairam 
Khan, his prime minister and guardian. 
From him Akbar learned the art of war ; 
and he saw in daily operation the rough and 
ready methods of government which were 
usual. We might call them the methods of 
Timur. They were, in fact, Timur's methods 
modified by the progress of culture and chiv- 
alry under intelligent and generous princes 

* It is difficult for us to realize the veritable condition of the 
peasantry of Europe in the beginning of the seventeenth century. 
If it should seem that the comparison in the text is too favorable 
to India, I beg to refer to a graphic portrayal of the wretched- 
ness of the peasants of France a century after Akbar, in the 
Mimoires de Saint- Simon^ year 1709, chapter xxix. The misery 
of 1709 in France vi^as exceptional, no doubt. But Akbar's policy 
provided for exceptional cases by distributing food, remitting 
taxes, and loaning money. In this connection reference may 
also be made to Feillet, Histoire du Pauperisme, and to La 
Bruyere's famous paragraph on the French peasants, in his chapter 
De r Homme. The facts for England are to be found in Professor 
Thorold Rogers' -^xjfery of Prices, and some conclusions therefrom 
in the Nineteenth Century for June, 1893, page 932. 



156 The Mogul E^nperors 

like Babar and Humayun. There Is little 
doubt that Akbar's reflections on these 
methods impressed upon him at least one 
grave defect. If he were to rule in India, it 
was essential to be at peace with the great 
Hindu chiefs.* This could not be unless the 
old political -methods were made more liberal. 
Moreover, the fundamental law of every 
Muhammadan empire was the law of the 
Kuran, interpreted, be it remembered, by 
big^ots. 

It was clear that the millions of Hindus 
could not be ruled by such a code. Political 
and religious toleration were therefore forced 
upon Akbar, and he became convinced that 
the old methods must be greatly changed. 
It is probable that Bairam Khan did not share 
these views ; it is, at any rate, certain, that 
the harem intrigued against him. In his 
eighteenth year Akbar dismissed Bairam 
(sending him on the pilgrimage to Mecca, 
pardoning his outbreak into rebellion, and 
treating him with considerate generosity), and 

* There were nearly a hundred Hindu princes, many of them 
very powerful. 



Shah Akbaj" the Great 157 

assumed the sole authority. From this year 
(1560) Akbar ruled alone. Until the eigh- 
teenth year of his reign (1573) he was per- 
petually occupied in suppressing rebellion, or 
in conquering new provinces ; and it was not 
until then that his vast possessions were 
reduced to an orderly empire. These early 
years were necessarily years of strife and of 
successful military activity. 

Abul-fazl came to his court in 1574, at the 
end of this first period. Up to this time 
Akbar had been a good Muslim, making 
pilgrimages, and circumambulating the tombs 
of saints. This second period of his reign 
(15 74-1605), though not free from wars and 
rebellions, is chiefly memorable for its peace- 
ful triumphs. 

" His majesty, who knows what high regard 
is due to approved customs of antiquity, is 
continually endeavoring to make himself 
acquainted with them ; and then, regardless 
of who was the institutor, he adopts such 
as appear proper." 

Toleration of the Hindu and Persian here- 
tics was, particularly in the latter part of his 



158 The Mogul Emperors 

reign, the keynote of Akbar's political con- 
duct. As Abul-fazl well says, " Religious 
persecution, after all, defeats its own ends ; 
it obliges men to conceal their opinions, but 
produces no change in them." In the flowery 
language of the Thousand and One Nights., 
this principle deserves to be " written with 
needle-gravers on the corners of the eye-balls, 
as a warner to whoso will be warned." 

His early toleration in religious matters 
was succeeded by the establishment of an 
eclectic religion in which Akbar himself 
represented Deity much as the Roman 
emperors had done. The sun, as the symbol 
of celestial power, was worshipped daily by the 
ruler, while the people saluted the emperor 
as the representative of that power on earth. 
Abul-fazl has various references to " The 
Divine Faith," or the " Divine Monotheism," 
as the new belief was called, and I purpose to 
extract a few of them. 

There is nothing more curious in human 
history than the formation of a creed. It 
must not rudely reject all the beliefs of the 
past, but it may modify them so as to meet 



Shah Akbar the Great 159 

the demands of the present. " The Divine 
Faith " was prosperous under Akbar, and it 
survived for a while under his immediate 
successor, but it died a natural death as time 
went on ; and India was left under the sway 
of its manifold native sects and of little- 
altered Islamism. 

Four times daily the emperor returned 
thanks to the Deity — at daybreak, at noon, at 
sunset, and at midnight. "All these grand 
mysteries are in honor of God ; and if ignorant 
people cannot comprehend their meaning, who 
is to be blamed ? Every one is sensible that 
it is our duty to praise our benefactor, and 
consequently to praise this Fountain of Light, 
the Sun, and more especially behoveth it 
princes so to do, seeing that this sovereign 
of the heavens sheddeth his divine influence 
upon the monarchs of the earth. His 
majesty has also great veneration for fire in 
general, and for lamps, since they are to be 
accounted rays of the greater light." Once 
a year, near the vernal equinox, fire was 
brought down from heaven by a crystal lens, 
and " this celestial fire was committed to the 



i6o The Mogul Emperors 

care of proper persons " (Abul-fazl himself 
being the chief of these) ; " and when the 
year expires they catch new fire." Huge 
candles of camphor, in candlesticks of massy 
gold and silver, lighted the emperor's camp 
by night. So minutely were his affairs regu- 
lated, that the number of fiambeajix in the 
palace (fire-pots of torches) was regulated 
by the age of the moon. At new moon 
eight flambeaux were lighted ; from the 
fourth to the tenth day, one less was burned 
each night, so that on the tenth day one was 
sufficient, and so on throughout the lunation. 
The very quantity of oil and rags per torch 
was specified. 

Again he says, Of Spiritual Guidance, that 
" by the decrees of God mankind are in 
general disposed to applaud their own 
actions, and to condemn those of others ; " 
" thus different bodies of men hold different 
beliefs, and amuse themselves with their 
respective dreams and illusions." " Some- 
times, through the good fortune of mankind, 
the truth may be revealed. When a private 
person arrives at such a degree of knowledge, 



Shah Akbar the Great i6i 

he keeps silence from the dread of savage 

beasts In human forms ; but if this light is 

given to an emperor, as the astrologers 

knew that it was given to Akbar," then, 

indeed, is fit occasion to speak. " His 

majesty did, however, for some time, cast a 

veil over this mystery, that it might not be 

known to strangers." 

Finally he proclaimed his divine attributes, 

and his miraculous power was manifested 

in various ways ; those who came near him 

increased in knowledge, and the poor and 

needy loved him. He foretold the future 

and cured diseases. " His majesty instructs 

others as circumstances may require ; and 

many, according to their capacities, are 

recreated with sublime discourses." But, 

says the courtier, "■ this Is not the proper 

place for giving a full account of the manner 

in which he instructs mankind, nor of the 

numerous miracles he has performed. Should 

my life be sufficiently prolonged, and should I 

have leisure enough, it is my intention to 

compose a volume on this interesting sub- 

ject. 

II 



1 62 The Mogul Emperors 

It is plain that the good Abul-fazl was 
willing to postpone his promised volume, 
and it is clear enough that "the Divine 
Faith " had no real interior vitality. This 
religion was too much based on reasonings. 
There were no mighty miracles and signs 
manifest upon which to rest it. The " mir- 
acles " ascribed to Akbar are poor and cheap 
affairs. " Faith is believing what is not 
true," as the little school-child wrote. Akbar 
did not make sufficient demands on the credu- 
lity of his sectaries. They acquiesced in his 
lordship ; they rejoiced in the sunshine of his 
favor ; they prospered under his just and even 
rule. The state religion endured under him, 
and under his immediate successor ; but even 
the emperors held it lightly, and admitted 
Jesuits and Mollahs to open debates in their 
presence, and proposed to put the power of 
prayer to physical tests. 

Akbar's toleration is well summed up in 
an inscription written by Abul-fazl for one 
of the temples of Cashmere : 

Oh God, in every tetnple I see people that see Thee, and in every 
language I hear spoken, people praise Thee, 



Shah Akbar the Great 163 

Polytheism and Islam feel after Thee, 

Each religion says. Thou art One, without equal. 

If it be a mosque, people murmur the holy prayer ; and if it be a 
Christian church, people ring the bell from love to Thee. 

Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the 
mosque. 

But it is Thou whom I seek frofn temple to temple. 

Thy elect have no dealings with heresy nor with orthodoxy ; for 
neither of these stands behind the screen of Thy truth. 

Heresy to the heretic, and religion to the orthodox. 

But the dtist of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume- 
seller. 

The foregoing account is mostly drawn 
from Abul-fazl's book of the Regulations of 
Akbar. I have not been willing to inter- 
rupt its orderly flow with commentaries from 
the other native historians of the reign, but 
have preferred to present extracts from their 
various accounts together in one place. 

The Emperor Jahangir gives us this por- 
trait of Akbar, his father, in his Memoirs, 
It would seem to be of the highest authority. 
He says : " My father used to hold discourse 
with learned men of all persuasions ; though 
he was illiterate, yet, from constantly convers- 
ing with learned and clever persons, his 
language was so polished that no one could 



164 The Mogtd Emperors 

discover from his conversation that he was 
entirely uneducated. He understood the 
elegancies of poetry and prose so well, that 
it is impossible to conceive of any one more 
proficient." I had read this description a 
great many times, and failed to reconcile 
entire illiteracy with the possession of deli- 
cate critical faculties, when I found what I 
suppose to be a solution. Akbar ascended the 
throne at the age of thirteen, after a youth 
full of accidents and perils and vicissitudes. 
From a paragraph in the history of Mir 
Yahya Masum, whose son was chosen to be 
his preceptor in the second year of his reign, 
it appears that ''at that time the prince 
knew not how to read and write." The very 
phrase " at that time " indicates that he sub- 
sequently became ** literate." And Jahangir's 
description probably means no more than 
that his father was not educated in his youth, 
which is not surprising, considering the events 
of the last years of Humayun's troubled 
reign. This instructor of Akbar's— Mir Ab- 
dullatif — was the first to teach him the prin- 
ciple of '' peace-zuttk-all," a doctrine which 



Shah Akbar the Great 165 

was then definite enough to have a special 
name. In Akbar's sixteenth year he had 
another tutor, and read with him "poems in 
mystic language." 

A highly educated youth in those days 
would read and write Arabic, understand 
its grammar and its rules of poetic com- 
position. Large portions of the Kuran he 
would know by heart. Persian would be 
his mother-tongue, and he would be able to 
repeat nearly the whole of the poems of Hafiz 
and Saadi, and many verses from Firdausi. 
He would be familiar with the biographies of 
kings and princes. He would know a little 
mathematics and astronomy and somewhat of 
music. The descendants of Timur kept up a 
knowledge of the Turki language certainly as 
late as the time of Jahangir, who could com- 
pose in Turki. '^^ 

"Akbar was of middling stature, but with a 
tendency to be tall ; wheat-color complexion, 
rather dark than fair; black eyes and eye- 

* For an amusing sketch of a perfect education, the reader 
should refer to the tale of Abu-al-Husn and his slave-girl Tawad- 
dud in I.ady Burton's Arabian Nights, vol. iii., p. 277. 



1 66 The Mogtd Emperors 

brows ; stout body ; open forehead and chest ; 
long arms and hands. ... He had a very 
loud voice, and a very elegant and pleasant 
way of speech. His manners and habits were 
quite different from those of other persons, 
and his visage was full of godly dignity," — so 
says his son Jahangir. 

Like his ancestors, Akbar was an eager 
hunter. In one day he personally slew six- 
teen of the swift wild asses of the desert. He 
ornamented the mile-posts near Agra with 
" some hundreds of thousands of the horns of 
stags" which had been killed in his hunts. 
He once rode two hundred and twenty miles 
within forty-eight hours. '* His history is 
filled with instances of romantic courage, 
and he seems to have been stimulated by an 
instinctive love of danger as often as by any 
rational motive." He perfectly fulfilled the 
ideals of personal chivalry which were current 
in his day. These ideals had their sources 
among the Arabs, and in India they were 
modified by the Rajput standards of military 
valor — no mean origin and descent. The 
following instances of chivalry and loyalty 



Shah Akbar the Great 167 

show how fully these Ideals were carried out 
in practice by the Turki warriors. One of 
Timur's sons (Jahangir) was pursuing Kum- 
mer Addyn and overtook him. A soldier 
threw himself forward and in a tone of 
authority cried out, "/am Kummer Addyn," 
— and perished in his master's stead. 

Qasim Kokah and Babar were taken 
prisoners by an Uzbeg Khan. Qasim an- 
nounced that he was Babar, and was cut to 
pieces, leaving Babar to escape. Bairam 
Khan, a high officer of Humayun's (and the 
guardian of young Akbar), was surprised by 
an enemy. Abul Qasim, a man of imposing 
stature, was mistaken for Bairam, and was 
about to be killed, when the latter stepped 
forward and said in a manly voice, " I am 
Bairam." "No," said Abul Qasim, "he is 
only my attendant ; and, brave and faithful 
as he is, he wishes to sacrifice himself for me. 
So let him off." It was so. Abul was slain, 
and his over-lord Bairam escaped. 

Akbar captured the strong castle of Chitor 
after a heroic defence by Rajah Jeimall 
(whom Akbar shot with his favorite gun 



1 68 The Mogul Emperors 

named Sangrani) and his brother. To honor 
the extraordinary valor of these high-born 
adversaries, Akbar set up their statues, 
mounted on elephants, at the gates of his 
royal city of Delhi. Says Bernier, "These 
two huge elephants, mounted by the two 
heroes, are full of grandeur, and fill me with 
indescribable awe and respect." 

One more instance must suffice. To sup- 
press a dangerous revolt, Akbar marched 
an army of three thousand men four hundred 
and fifty miles in nine days, in the rainy 
season, and completely surprised the rebel 
army (which was much larger than his own) 
sleeping in their tents. The few who were 
alert could not believe that they saw the 
emperor, since there were no war elephants 
in his train. "The feeling ran through the 
royal ranks that it was unmanly to fall upon 
an enemy unawares, and that they would wait 
until he was roused." Akbar accordingly 
ordered the trumpeters to sound the onset ; 
the rebel army prepared for action, and was 
routed and overwhelmed. 

While Jahangir, the son of Akbar, was 



Shah Akbar the Great 169 

yet the heir-apparent, his tendency to cruel 
punishments had begun to show itself. In 
all matters of state he was ever inexorable 
and relentless. On one occasion he ordered 
a servant, who had joined a conspiracy 
against his life, to be flayed alive. When 
this came to the ears of his father, whose 
policy in such cases was usually so very 
different, and whose nature was kind, he 
wrote his son a severe letter, reprobating his 
conduct, and saying that as he himself was 
unable to see even a sheep stripped of its 
skin without horror, it was inconceivable to 
him how his son could inflict such an awful 
punishment upon a fellow creature. Akbar 
could be very brief and peremptory, how- 
ever, upon occasion. To a dilatory envoy 
he sent this letter : " If thou dost not return 
to court with Asad, thou shalt see what will 
happen to thee and to thy children." Vari- 
ous anecdotes show that he had a violent, 
though not a vindictive, temper.* His 
clemency was of very gradual growth. 

* See Herbert's Travels, edition of 1638, p. 71. 



170 The Mogul Emperors 

" The emperor used to retire after even- 
ing prayers, during which time the serv- 
ants dispersed, assembHng again when they 
expected his majesty to reappear. That 
evening he happened to come out earlier 
than usual. He saw a luckless lamplighter 
coiled up in a careless sleep. Enraged at 
the sight, he ordered him to be thrown from 
the tower, and he was dashed into a thousand 
pieces." The officers on guard were dis- 
graced and their places given to others. We 
have this story from one of the latter. In 
the twelfth year of his reign eight thousand 
Rajputs were slaughtered after the surrender 
at Chitor ; in the seventeenth he ordered the 
tongue of a captive to be cut out ; in the 
eighteenth he raised a pyramid of two thou- 
sand heads in the fashion of Timur ; and in 
various portions of his earlier reign he 
sanctioned, or directly ordered, barbarous 
punishments and torture. This was before 
he had come under the influence of Abul- 
fazl, and while he was still a young man. 

But for every such act of violence, a score 
of wise and humane enactments can be cited. 



Shah Ahbar the Great 171 

In the seventh year of his reign it was decreed 
that the wives and children of soldiers cap- 
tured in war should no longer be made slaves ; 
in the eighth the onerous taxes on pilgrims 
were removed ; in the ninth the poll-tax on un- 
believers (a mighty multitude^ was abolished ;* 
in the twenty-fifth a full census of all the 
inhabitants (giving names and occupations) 
was made, in order to equalize the inci- 
dence of taxation ; in the twenty-eighth the 
obligatory suttee was abolished, and Akbar 
him.self broke up the custom by his per- 
sonal presence ; these, among many other 
instances, may be cited. 

" He was a powerful, world-subduing mon- 
arch, the very emblem of justice. His object 
was to unite all men in a common bond of 

* A century before Akbar's time the Muhammadan ruler of 
Cashiuere — Ali Shah — had anticipated many of Akbar's reforms in 
de.iling with his Hindu subjects. He abolished the hated tax on 
infidels, forbade the slaughter of oxen, and was, besides, an ardent 
patron of learning and of the arts. These and other like matters 
were familiar to Akbar through verbal reports and, after the twelfth 
year of his reign, through the translation of the history of Cashmere 
which Faizi was preparing. The doctrine of nnirersal toleration, 
too, was no new thing in India. During the whole of the six- 
teenth century it was preached and practised by the Sikhs. 



1 72 The Mogul Emperors 

peace." He strove to be the king of all his 
subjects. He maintained four hundred and 
fifteen Mansebdars — commanders of horse. 
Of these, fifty-one were Hindus, the rest 
Moguls, Usbeks, Afghans, Turks, and Per- 
sians. Shah Jahan had six hundred and nine 
Mansebdars, of whom one hundred and ten 
were Hindus. It was simply impossible to 
govern these chiefs and their followers by 
the rigid law of Islam. Tolerance was a 
political necessity. As Lord Tennyson has 
said in the notes to his poem of Akbars 
Dream, " His tolerance of religion, and his 
abhorrence of religious persecutions, put our 
Tudors to shame." 

The most interesting incidents of his reign 
are connected with the foundation of "the 
Divine Monotheism." His chief adviser in 
this step was his wazir Abul-fazl. 

Shaikh Mubarak, a distinguished and lib- 
eral-minded scholar, had two yet more distin- 
guished and liberal-minded sons — Faizi the 
poet (born 1547), and Abul-fazl the writer, 
the statesman, and the prime minister of 
Akbar (born 1551). It is necessary to know 



Shah Akbar the Great 173 

something of this family, whose influence 
was predominant during the larger part 
of Akbar's life. Faizi was first intro- 
duced at court in the twelfth year of Akbar's 
reign, and became his friend and favorite. 
Abul-fazl came six years later, in 1574, when 
Akbar, now thirty-two years old, began to 
have some respite from his incessant wars 
and expeditions. Shaikh Mubarak was bred 
an orthodox Sunni, had become, more or less, 
a Shia, and had investigated the various 
religions of India and of Persia. 

Faizi's poems often turn on religious ques- 
tions, which are sometimes treated mystically, 
but frequently in a spirit of simple devotion. 
Like all poets, he deals with the universal 
passion of love ; but, as with other Ori- 
entals, it is the beautiful boy who is the 
beloved. Abul-fazl promises at some future 
time to give a critical edition of Faizi's 
verses ; * " but now," he says, " but now, it is 
brotherly love — a love which does not travel 
along the road of critical nicety — that com- 
mands me to write down some of his verses." 

* A promise which he redeemed. 



174 T"^^ Mogul Emperors 

I shall copy a few of the many extracts so 
given, partly to illustrate the nature of the 
poetry of the age, partly to exhibit the char- 
acter of the poet, and that of the emperor 
who admired and loved him. 

These verses are from Faizi's Odes : 

Oh Thou who existest from Eiernily, and abidest forever, sight 

cannot bear Thy light, praise cannot express Thy perfection. 
Thy light melts the understanding, and Thy glory baffles wisdom ; 

to think of Thee destroys reasoit ; Thy essence confounds thought. 
Science is like blinding desert sand on the road to Thy perfection j 

the town of Literature is a inere hamlet compared with the 

world of Thy knowledge. 
Human knowledge and thought combined can only spell the first 

letter of the alphabet of Thy love. 
Each brain is full of the thought of grasping Thee ; the brow of 

Plato even burned with the fever heat of this hopeless thought. 



Oh man, thou coin bearing the double stamp of body and spirit, I 

do not know what thy nature is ; for thou art higher than 

heaven and lower than earth. 
Thy frame contains the image of the heavenly and the lower regions ; 

be either heavenly or earthly, thou art at liberty to choose. 
Do not act against thy reason, for it is a trustworthy coutisellor ; 

put not thy heart on illusiojis, for the heart is a lying fool. 
Be ashamed of thy appearance ; for thou pridest thyself on the 

title of " sum-total," and art yet but a margifial note. 
If thou wishest to understand the secret meaning of the phrase "to 

prefer the welfare of others to thy own,^' treat thyself with poison 

and others with supar. 



Shah Akbar the Great 175 

My dear Son, consider hoxo short the time is that the star of good 
fortune revolves according to thy wish ; Fate shozes no friend- 
ship. 

The companion of my loneliness is my conprehensive genius j the 

scratching of my pen is harmony for my ear. 
If I were to bring forth what is in my mind, I wonder whether 

the spirit of the age could bear it. 

The following couplets are from the 

Ghazals : 

It were better if I melted my heart, and laid the foundation for a 
new one ; I have too of ten patie^itly patched up my torn heart. 



Although life far from thee is an approach to death, yet to stand at 
a distance is a mark of courtesy. 



I cannot show tmgratefulness to love. Has he not overzvhelmed me 
with — sadness and sadness? 



I cannot understand the juggler-trick which love performed ; it 
introduced Thy form through so sinall an aperture as the pupil 
of my eye, into the large space of ?ny heart, and yet my heart 
cannot contain it. 



The most wonderful thing I have seen is Faizi's heart j it is at 
once the pearl, the ocean, and the diver. 

This verse from the Rtibais goes very far 
in flattery of the emperor : 



176 The Mogul Emperors 

If you ivish to see the path of guidance as I have done, you will 

never see it without having seen the king. 
Thy old-fashioned prostration is of no advantage to thee — see 

Akbar and you see God. 

Akbar had been, in all outward respects at 
least, a good Muslim up to the year 1574, 
making pilgrimages to the tombs of saints, 
etc.* Unquestionably his mind had been 
revolving religious doubts for some time 
previous. The influence of Abul-fazl seems 
to have confirmed Akbar's disposition, and to 
have stimulated definite inquiry. 

Shah Nawaz Khan (born 1699), a standard 
authority, says of him that "It has often 
been asserted that Abul-fazl was an infidel ; 
it is more just to say that he was a pan- 
theist. There is no doubt that he was a 
man of lofty character, and desired to live 
at peace with all men." He was magnani- 
mous to his enemies ; he was pure in his 
mind ; he was incorruptibly honest in the 
public service. Abul-fazl was an elegant 
writer. " His pen was more feared than 

* In the twelfth year of his reign he destroyed or mutilated 
the fine monuments of Chitor, partly for political reasons, no 
doubt ; but partly, also, for religious ones. 



Shah Akbar the Great 177 

Akbar's arrow." He was an excellent ad- 
ministrator, a loyal and devoted subject, a 
liberal patron, a considerate friend. A large 
share of the glory of Akbar's reign is directly 
due to him. Such a king deserved such a 
wazir. 

Bedauni (one of the emperor's histori- 
ans, and a man of learning) says of Abul-fazl, 
that Akbar " looked upon him more favor- 
ably than he did upon me ; " that Abul-fazl 
" ingratiated himself by his unremitting 
devotion to the king's service, by his tem- 
porizing disposition, by his duplicity, by his 
study of the king's sentiments, and by his 
boundless flattery." Abul-fazl's flattery was 
boundless at times, but not more so than the 
habit of the age demanded. He was never 
silly about it, like the courtier who told Le 
Roi-Soleil that the rain at Marly was not wet. 
Abul-fazl's fortunes (deservedly) rose till he 
became wazir. " But poor I," says Bedauni, 
" from my inexperience and simplicity, could 
not manage to advance myself." " I do not 
like my position, and should be glad to be in 
any other." He himself was much to blame 



I 78 The Mogul Emperors 

for his ill-fortune, as he made enemies right 
and left, and was so foolish as to be absent 
from his duties for a long time without a 
leave. The king did not like him (though 
his learning was doubtless appreciated), and 
on one occasion spoke harshly to him at 
court. " From that day," Bedauni says, " I 
have abandoned my presumptuous and con- 
troversial manner." Both Abul-fazl and his 
distinguished brother Faizi were constantly 
kind to Bedauni for a space of forty years. 
He was never tired of reviling them, partly, 
no doubt, from sheer envy of their success. 
It is only fair to say, however, that he was a 
truly devout Muhammadan, and that his 
religious beliefs were daily outraged by the 
doings and sayings of these free-thinking 
heretics. 

Poor Bedauni was set (much against his 
will) to translate the Maha-Bharata for the 
emperor's library. What a task for a true 
believer! "The consequence was, that I 
translated two sections, at the puerile ab- 
surdities of which the creation may well 
be amazed. Such injunctions as one never 



Shah Akbar the Great 179 

heard of ! What not to eat, and a prohibition 
against turnips ! " " But such is my fate — to 
be employed on such works ! " " Abul-fazl 
wrote the preface. Allah defend us from 
his infidelities and absurdities!" Bedauni 
also translated the Ramayana, spending four 
years in the task. He seems to have been 
better pleased with this work, for, when he 
presented the complete book, " it was greatly 
praised." We learn that a Jesuit from Goa 
translated many Greek treatises for the 
emperor's library. 

The Ain-i-Akbari of Abul-fazl presents 
the history of Akbar's change of religious 
opinions from the view-point of one who was 
himself high-priest of the new religion. The 
wazir of Akbar puts the most favorable con- 
struction upon every circumstance. 

The native historians also contain many 
references to the establishment of the Divine 
Faith, and the more important extracts shall 
be copied here. Professor Blochmann's 
edition of Abul-fazl's work devotes a long 
note of fifty pages to a history of Akbar's 
religious views. It is very largely composed 



i8o The Mogul Emperors 

of extracts from Bedauni ; and these extracts 
are carefully arranged in chronological order. 
Bedauni was certainly a prejudiced witness 
and a disappointed courtier; but he was, no 
less certainly, a man of intelligence, learning, 
and courage. Allowance should be made for 
his bias ; but his testimony deserves the most 
careful attention. I shall extract from Pro- 
fessor Blochmann's translation of Bedauni 
the most significant paragraphs, in order to 
present both sides of a most important ques- 
tion. Akbar is too great a man to need any 
praise that is not his just due. 

" It was during these days (a.d. 1574) that 
Abul-fazl came the second time to court. 
He laid before the emperor (as a present) 
a commentary on (one of the verses of the 
Kuran) ; and, though people said that it had 
been written by his father, Abul-fazl was 
much praised." 

Bedauni now gives an account of the per- 
secutions to which Abul-fazl and his two sons 
had been subjected in the early years of 
Akbar's reign. They were not orthodox 
Sunnis, and they had been obliged to fly for 



Shah Akbar the Great 



i«i 



their lives and to keep in hiding for safety. 
Faizi had been called to court as a poet, and 
had been received graciously on that account, 
as has been said. His influence over Akbar 
grew rapidly and surely ; and soon his father 
and his younger brother were high in Akbar's 
favor through their own merits and on his 
introduction. They did not persecute their 
early enemies. 

"During the year 1575 many places of 
worship were built by command of his maj- 
esty. The cause was this. For many years 
previously the emperor had gained remark- 
able and decisive victories. The empire had 
grown in extent from day to day ; everything 
had turned out well. His majesty had thus 
leisure . . . and passed much of his 
time in discussing the Kuran and the Tradi- 
tions. Sufism, scientific discussions, inquiries 
into philosophy and law, were the order of 
the day. His majesty passed whole nights 
in thoughts of God ; his heart was full of 
reverence for Him who is the true Giver. 
From a feeling of thankfulness for his past 
successes, he would sit many a morning alone. 



1 82 The Mogul Emperors 

in prayer and melancholy, on a large flat 
stone which lay near the palace, in a lonely 
spot, with his head bent over his chest, 
gathering the bliss of early hours." 

" The emperor had, from his youth, taken 
delight in the society of learned men. He 
always treated them with respect and honor. 
He listened to their discussions of nice points 
of science, of the ancient and modern history 
of religions and peoples and sects, and he 
profited by what he heard." He built a 
special palace for such assemblies in the 
twentieth year of his reign (when he was 
thirty-three years old), and spent many 
nights there in their company. The palace 
had four halls. In the western, the descend- 
ants of the Prophet sat ; in the southern, 
sat the learned and the wise ; in the north- 
ern, the Shaikhs and " men-of-ecstasy ; " in the 
eastern, the nobles of the court who were in 
sympathy with learning. When his majesty 
was too fatigued with business to attend these 
meetings, he sent one of his nobles in his 
place, choosing a man " in whose kindness 
and gentleness he had confidence." 



Shah Akbar the Great 183 

Some idea of the constitution of Akbar's 
court, and of the wise men who assembled 
in these congresses, can be obtained from the 
biographies given at the end of Bedauni's 
history, which relate to thirty-eight Shaikhs 
and holy men, sixty-nine "learned men," fif- 
teen physicians, and no less than one hundred 
and fifty-three poets. The names of three 
monks who lived at court have come down 
to us — Rudolpho Aquaviva, Antonio de Mon- 
serrato, Francisco Enriques. These meetings 
for discussion were held every Thursday 
night. They were fully attended, and they 
were often very far from orderly. " The 
Chief Justice, in the meeting-hall, called 
Hadji Ibrahim an accursed wretch, and lifted 
up his stick to strike him." 

Muhammad predicted that Islam would be 
divided into seventy-two heretical sects ; and 
there were representatives of enough hostile 
parties in these meetings to bring their dis- 
cussions to violent terminations. Akbar 
became frankly disgusted with what he saw 
and heard in his meeting-hall Abul-fazl, his 
father, and his brother, did not fail to point 



184 The Mogul Emperors 

out the scandal of it to the emperor, though, 
at first, it appears they did not join freely in 
the disputes. 

Akbar's disgust was the first stage in his 
perversion from Islam. He soon went farther. 
On one occasion he commanded the presence 
of a high doctor of the law, " as he wished 
to annoy him." Abul-fazl and some others 
newly come to court were set on by the 
emperor to oppose him. " His majesty took 
every occasion to interrupt." According to 
an order previously given by Akbar, some 
of those present began to tell scandalous 
stories of the invited guest, and to badger 
him in many offensive ways. The doctor 
was disgraced, and odium was thrown on the 
cause which he represented. At a later meet- 
ing, Akbar, who had as many wives as Solo- 
mon,* set a trap for the Muslim doctors of 
the law by asking how many free-born wives 
he could lawfully maintain. There is no doubt 
that the maximum number for a good Muslim 
is four. Muslim practice has always winked 

* The names of eleven wives are given by Blochmann. Tiiere 
were five thousand women in the harem, including servants. 



Shah Akbar the Great 185 

at an unlimited number of wives for kings ; 
but Akbar put the question as a matter of 
Muslim theory. If he could have but four 
wives, what, then, was the legal status of the 
many free-born and high-born Rajput prin- 
cesses in his harem ? Were they concubines ? 
Dare the Muhammadan doctors insult the 
emperor's wives ? The trap was not a fair 
one. The Muslim doctor who was the victim 
on that occasion, closed his part of the dis- 
cussion with a very sensible remark, when he 
saw that the case was hopeless. " Very well," 
said he, " I have nothing more to add ; just 
as his majesty pleases." A complaisant Cazi 
was found who, then and there, gave a decree 
that such marriages were legal. " The veteran 
lawyers made very long faces at these pro- 
ceedings," as well they might. The most 
uncompromising of the religious orthodox 
were now banished ; new heretics came to 
court and were received into favor, and new 
heresies sprung up. " His majesty had the 
early history of Islam read to him, and soon 
commenced to think less well " of everything 
concerned with it. " Soon after, the observ- 



1 86 The Mogul Emperors 

ance of the five prayers and fasts, and the 
belief in everything connected with the 
Prophet, were put down as religious blind- 
ness, and man's reason was acknowledged 
as the basis of all religion. Portuguese 
priests also came frequently, and his 
majesty inquired into the articles of their 
belief, which are based on reason." 

In the year 1576 Bedauni again chronicles 
the arrival of new heretics. The Thursday 
evening discussions still continued, and be- 
came more and more violent. The funda- 
mental truths of Islam were now called in 
question. 

In 1578 Bedauni writes: "His majesty, 
till now, had shown every sincerity, and 
was diligently searching for truth. But his 
education had been much neglected ; and, 
surrounded as he was by men of low and 
heretic principles, he had been forced to 
doubt the truth of Islam. Falling from one 
perplexity into the other, he lost sight of 
his real object, the search for truth ; and 
when the strong embankment of our clear 
law and our excellent faith had once been 



Shah Akbar the Great 187 

broken through, his majesty grew colder 
and colder, till, after the short space of five 
or six years, not a trace of Muhammadan 
feeling was left in his heart. Matters then 
became very different." 

In 1595 Bedauni says matters had come 
to such a pass that a request to make the 
pilgrimage to Mecca would have subjected 
the asker to capital punishment. 

" A faith based on some elementary prin- 
ciples traced itself (gradually) on the mirror 
of his heart, and there grew the conviction 
that there were sensible men in all religions 
(and in all ages). If some true knowledge 
was thus everywhere to be found, why should 
truth be confined to one religion ; or to 
a creed like Islam, which was scarcely a 
thousand years old ? " 

" The doctrine of the transmigration of 
souls, especially, took deep root in his heart." 
Flatterers told the emperor that "the per- 
fect man " referred to the ruler of the age, 
and that the nature of a king was holy. " In 
this way many agreeable things were said 
to the emperor." " Learned monks brought 



1 88 The Mogul Emperors 

the gospel. His majesty firmly believed in 
the truth of the Christian religion, and 
ordered Prince Murad (then eight years 
old) to take a few lessons in Christianity." 
"■ These accursed monks applied the descrip- 
tion of a cursed Satan to Muhammad, the 
best of all prophets — God's blessings rest 
on him and his whole house — a thing which 
even devils would not do." The Brahmin 
Rajah Bir Bal " impressed upon the em- 
peror that the sun was the origin of every- 
thing. The emperor learned, from some 
Hindus, formularies to reduce the influence 
of the sun to his subjection, and read them 
morning and evening as a religious exercise." 
The sun was venerated as the chief light 
and benefactor of the world, and as a friend 
to kings, who used it to mark periods and 
eras. 

Akbar next prohibited the slaughter of 
cows, for two reasons ; first, " because the 
Hindus devoutly worship them," and, sec- 
ond, " because physicians represent their 
flesh as difificult of digestion and productive 
of illness " (as it very likely is in the hot 



Shah Akbar the Great 189 

climate of India). Akbar was eminently 
practical in his religious enactments, while 
he was at the same time devout. "Although 
he had full trust and hope of heavenly 
assistance, he neglected no material means 
of success," says one of his officials. 

Fire-worshippers also came to the court 
and taught their religion, and the sacred 
fire (lighted with a lens at the vernal equi- 
nox) was committed to the care of Abul- 
fazl. " Fire is one of the signs of God," said 
the emperor, " and one light from among 
the many lights of his creation." " In the 
twenty-fifth year of his reign he prostrated 
himself before the sun In public ; and in the 
evening the whole court had to rise up 
respectfully when the lamps were lighted." 
" These sentiments had been long growing 
in the emperor's mind, and ripened gradu- 
ally to a firm conviction." 

''In the year 1579 his majesty was anx- 
ious to unite in his person the powers of the 
state and those of the church, for he could 
not bear to be subordinate to any one." He 
made an attempt to read the public prayers 



iQO The Mogul Emperors 

in the mosque, ending with some verses of 
Faizi's : 

The Lord has given me the empire, 

And a wise heart, and a strong arm. 

He has guided me in righteousness aiid justice, 

And has removed fror?i my thoughts everything but justice. 

His praise surpasses mail's understanding. 

Great is his power, Allahu Akbar! 

Fear or the hope of promotion continu- 
ally brought new converts to Akbar's views. 

In the year 1579 Akbar issued a procla- 
mation which declared his judgments to be 
of higher validity than those of the religious 
doctors, and which virtually pronounced him 
to be infallible.* If there were a variance 
of opinion upon questions of religion, the 
decree of the king was to be final and bind- 
ing. " Further, if his majesty, in his unerr- 
ing judgment, should issue an order which 
is not in opposition to the Kuran, and which 
is for the benefit of the nation, it shall be 

* He had previously obtained the sanction of the doctors of the 
law, for form's sake. The document which they (reluctantly) 
signed made the emperor the spiritual as well as the temporal chief 
of the nation. " The intellect of the just king" took the place of 
the Kuran as the basis of the law. 



Shah Akbar the G^-eat 191 

binding and imperative on every man ; oppo- 
sition to it shall involve damnation in the 
world to come, and loss of religion and prop- 
erty in this life." 

** His majesty had now determined to use 
the formula : ' There is no God beside God, 
and Akbar is God's representative ; ' but as 
he found that the extravagance of this led 
to contentions, he restricted the use of it to 
a few people in the harem." 

In this same eventful year the emperor 
" distinctly denied the existence of jznns, of 
angels, and of all other beings of the invisi- 
ble world, as well as the miracles of the 
prophets and the saints ; he rejected the testi- 
mony of the witnesses of our faith, the proofs 
of the Kuran, the existence of the soul after 
death and future rewards and punishments 
so far as they differed from metempsychosis." 
Later on, his partisans strenuously insisted 
on the miracles performed by Akbar ; but 
they were feeble matters at the best — he 
spoke at his birth, was one — and carried no 
conviction. 

The long beard was worn by all good 



192 The Mogul Emperors 

Muslims, but Akbar ordered the officers 
of his court to appear with shaven faces. 
This was in the year 1592, when he was fifty 
years old.* 

Akbar became more and more ready to 
claim the dignity of a prophet, or even divine 
honors, says Bedauni. He also became in- 
tolerant of opposition, and deported good 
(and stubborn) Muslims as slaves, exchanging 
them for Turkish horses. " His majesty 
was now (1582) convinced that the millen- 
nium was drawing near." f The coinage was 
changed to show the era of the millennium ; 
a history of the past thousand years was 
written ; it was ordered that prostrations 
should be made before the king. Wine 

* I have, however, a beautiful portrait of him, in which he wears 
a white beard, parted and brushed sidewise in the Hindu fashion. 
It must have been painted late in his life. The face is nervous, 
almost querulous in expression, fine to the verge of anxiousness. 
In middle life his face was strong and somewhat coarse. Portraits, 
taken in his last years, represent him with a long white moustache 
and a full beard closely clipped. A medal struck after his death 
represents him without a beard. I have never been fortunate 
enough to see a picture of Akbar in his youth. 

f We may recall that Europe in A.D. looo was subject to like 
delusions. 



Shah Akbar the Great 193 

shops were licensed in Agra. Pigs and dogs 
were no longrer looked on as unclean. A 
splendid tomb was even built for one of 
Akbar's hounds. Certain of the ceremonial 
ablutions were abrogated. It was forbidden 
to marry a cousin. The prayers of Islam 
and the pilgrimage were prohibited. The 
era of the Hegira was abolished. A new 
Persian solar year was introduced. The 
feasts of the Zoroastrians were revived. The 
Jesuits of Agra and Lahore exhibited repre- 
sentations of the birth of Christ in wax. 'Tn 
the same way every doctrine of Islam was 
doubted and ridiculed." " The good were 
in fear, and the wicked were secure." " His 
majesty saw in the defeat of one party a 
proof of his own infallibility." One of the 
Muslim Mullas wrote, in derision : 

This year the emperor has claimed prophetship. 
Next year, if God wills, he will be God. 

Everything did not go smoothly with 

Akbar, however. Many of the best men 

held aloof. Rajah Bhagwan said to the 

emperor : " Only tell us where the new sect 
13 



194 '^^^^ Mogul Emperors 

is, so that I may believe." Rajah Man 
Singh declared that Islam he knew, and 
Hinduism he knew, but besides these he 
knew no other religion. One of the court- 
iers had made his fortune by proposing to 
introduce the custom of prostration before 
the king. Another, with an eye to profit, 
exclaimed, " Oh that I had been the inventor 
of this little business ! " A devout Muslim 
courtier used to say his prayers in the audi- 
ence chamber. When Akbar asked him to 
say them at home, he replied : " My king, 
this is not your kingdom, that you should 
give orders." Whereupon Akbar called him 
a fool, and cancelled his grant of land. 

In 1583 new orders of various kinds were 
made to " please the Hindus." Akbar wore 
the Hindu mark on his forehead, and the 
Brahminic thread. " His majesty learned 
alchemy, and showed in public some of the 
gold made by him." " Cheating Brahmins 
collected a set of a thousand and one San- 
scrit names of his majesty the Sun, and 
told the emperor that he was an incarnation 
like Ram and others. They also brought 



Shah Akbar the Great 195 

Sanscrit verses, said to have been taken 
from the sayings of ancient sages, In which 
It was predicted that a great conqueror 
should rise up In India who would honor 
Brahmins and cows, and govern the world 
with justice. They wrote this nonsense on 
old-looking paper and showed It to the 
emperor, who believed every word of It." 

Bedauni carries the history farther, with 
new details, but In what has gone before 
he has said his say ; the side of the good 
Muslim has been presented well and vigor- 
ously. Professor Blochmann sums up the 
evidence In a few words, saying that It 
shows how " Akbar, starting from the Idea 
of the divine right of kings, gradually came 
to look upon himself as the (high priest) 
of the age, then as the prophet of God and 
God's vicegerent on earth, and lastly as a 
deity." 

We have an account of the king's change 
of religious opinions, from Shaikh Nuru-1- 
Hakh. "One of the strange incidents of 
this year (1578) was the king's abandon- 
ment of the national religion, which became 



196 The Mogul Emperors 

a stumbling-block to many people weak in 
the faith." The king was constantly in at- 
tendance at the assemblies for religious dis- 
cussion, "for his mind was solely bent on 
ascertaining the truth." " The common 
people learning, day after day, something 
of the nature of the subjects discussed in 
these assemblies, entertained suspicions of 
the king's motives, which were derogatory 
to his character and but little deserved." 
They, in fact, feared that Akbar would 
assume divine honors, as he subsequently 
did, so far as was politic, or even possible. 

Abul-fazl's account of the discussion of 
the wise men is interesting. He says : 
" Sufis, doctors, preachers, lawyers, Sunnis, 
Shias, Brahmans, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, 
Zoroastrians, and learned men of every belief 
were gathered together in the royal assem- 
bly. Each one fearlessly brought forward 
his assertions, and the contentions were long 
and heated." A Jesuit from Goa refuted all 
comers, and offered, " with perfect calmness 
and earnest conviction," to undergo the 
ordeal of the fiery furnace with the Bible 



Shah Akbar the Great 197 

in his hands, against the Muhammedan doc- 
tors with the Kuran. The challenge was 
refused with angry words. The emperor 
also made experiments in natural religion. 
" It was ordered that some twenty suckling 
infants should be kept in a secluded place 
where they should not hear a word spoken, 
so as to test the accuracy of the tradition 
which says, ' Every one is born with an 
inclination to religion.' " This experiment 
was to see what creed they would incline to. 
It came to naught, for ''after three or four 
years the children all came out dumb." The 
experiment may have been suggested by 
Herodotus' account of a similar experience, 
which led to equally unsatisfactory conclu- 
sions. 

The following judgment, written by Mr. 
Sherar, C.S.I., presents a view of Akbar's 
religious experiments which it is worth while 
to quote. It is not the received view of 
Akbar's character, and it certainly is not a 
complete account. On the other hand, there 
is a shade of truth in it, at the very least. 
It should be weighed along with the rest. 



1 98 The Mogul Emperors 

Mr. Sherar says : "Akbarwas more amused 
at new doctrines, new theories, new objects 
of veneration, than burdened with the diffi- 
culties which surrounded the acceptance of 
them. And there surely is no parallel be- 
tween a grave and powerful mind bowed 
down, everlastingly, with the stern dilemmas 
of that great enigma, whence and whither ? 
and the superficial curiosity of an intellect 
that was too restless to bind itself perma- 
nently to any particular code of opin- 
ions." 

For my own part, I have found no brief 
judgment of Akbar's faith so entirely satis- 
factory as that of Elphinstone, who says: " It 
is to his internal policy that Akbar owes his 
place in that highest order of princes, whose 
reigns have been a blessing to mankind ; and 
that policy shows itself in different shapes, 
as it affects religious or civil government. 
Akbar's tolerant spirit was displayed early in 
his reign, and appears to have been entirely 
independent of any doubts of the divine 
origin of the Muhammadan faith. It led 
him, however, to listen, without prejudice, 



Shah Akbar the Great 199 

to the doctrines of other reHgions, and 
involved him in enmity with the bigoted 
members of his own, and must thus have 
contributed to shake his early belief, and to 
dispose him to question the infallible author- 
ity of the Kuran. The political advantages 
of a new religion, which should take in all 
classes of his subjects, could not fail, more- 
over, to occur to him. In the first part of 
his reign he was assiduous in visiting sacred 
places, and in attendance on holy men ; even 
in the twenty-first year of his reign he 
spoke seriously of performing the pilgrimage 
to Mecca. . . . The religion of Akbar 
seems to have been pure Deism, in addi- 
tion to which some ceremonies were per- 
mitted in consideration of human infirmity. 
It maintained that we ought to reverence 
God according to the knowledge of him 
derived from our own reason, by which his 
unity and benevolence are sufficiently estab- 
lished ; that we ought to serve him and to 
seek for our future happiness by subduing 
our bad passions and practising such vir- 
tues as are beneficial to mankind; but that 



200 The Mogul E'lnperors 

we should not adopt a creed on the authority 
of any man, as all were liable to vice and 
error like ourselves. If it were absolutely 
necessary for men to have some visible 
object of adoration, by means of which they 
might raise their souls to the Divinity, Akbar 
recommended that the sun, the planets, or 
fire should be the symbols. He had no 
priests, no public worship, and no restrictions 
about food, except a recommendation of 
abstinence, as tending to exalt the mind. 
His only observances were salutations to the 
sun, prayers at midnight and daybreak, and 
meditations at noon on the sun. . . . But 
as P\}^2ir practised ^iSi his ceremonies, as well 
as permitted them, it may be doubted whether 
they had not gained some hold on his imagi- 
nation. He seems to have been by nature 
devout, and, with all his scepticism, to have 
inclined even to superstitions that promised 
him a closer connection with the Deity." It 
is necessary to pause for a moment and to 
remark that, while these judgments are emi- 
nently true, we are trying this ruler of the 
sixteenth century by the standards of our 



Shah Akbar the Great 201 

own day. It is wonderful how the test is 
met. 

"In these days (a.d. 1575-76), his maj- 
esty asked how it would be if he engraved 
the words Allahtc-Akbar (which means God 
is great, but which can be made to mean 
Akbar is God^ upon the imperial coins," 
The ambiguity was pointed out to him, and 
he was displeased, saying that " it was self- 
evident that no creature, in the depths of his 
impotence, could advance any claim to divin- 
ity." The words were, however, finally so 
engraved. 

Of Akbar's revenue arrangements we have 
this account by Bedauni (who was a malcon- 
tent) : " Regulations were circulated, but 
eventually these were not observed as they 
ouofht to have been." He admits the excel- 
lence of the regulations themselves, but gives 
instances where the peasants' lands were laid 
waste, and their wives and children sold 
through the rapacity of the officials. But 
"many of the officials were brought to 
account" and punished; even tortured. In 
spite of this, the fate of the husbandman and 



202 The Mogtd Emperors 

of the soldier was hard ; " but for all this, 
the emperor's good fortune was so great 
and flourishing, that his enemies were every- 
where annihilated, and soldiers were not so 
much wanted," One of the Sivalte poets of 
Bengal (quoted by Sir W. W. Hunter) in 
the sixteenth century, gives a life-like picture 
of the oppressions of Muhammadan officers 
in the remoter districts of the empire. " All 
classes," he says, " were crushed with an equal 
tyranny ; fallow lands were entered as arable ; 
and, by a false measurement, three-fourths 
of a bigha were taxed as a full bigha. The 
treasury officers deducted more than one 
rupee in seven, short weight and exchange. 
The husbandmen fled from their lands and 
threw their cattle and goods into the mar- 
kets, so that ' a rupee's worth of things sold 
for ten annas.'" 

In another native authority we read : " At 
this place some of the emperor's officers 
were directed to protect the cultivated land 
in the vicinity of the camp; and, besides this, 
trustworthy men were directed to carefully 
examine the land after the army had passed, 



Shah Akbar the Great 203 

and to assess the damage done. This prac- 
tice became a rule in all his campaigns." '^" It 
is plain that the effort of the emperor was 
to do justice. It is certain that the older 
provinces of the kingdom were well and 
mildly governed. It is beyond a doubt that 
frequent instances of misrule and oppression 
occurred everywhere, especially in the newly 
conquered districts. It was obviously neces- 
sary for Akbar to be tolerant in religious 
matters for the sake of political stability. 
How much of his even-handed justice and 
mild benevolence sprang from the same 
necessity, it is not possible to say. But leav- 
ing to one side all questions as to interior 
motives, the writings of the native historians 
show that the emperor's reign was marked 
by the most consummate political skill. His 
personal character is far less engaging and 
distingruished than that of his g^randfather 
Babar ; he did not leave so many magnifi- 
cent buildings as Shah Jahan ; but he con- 

* The troops of the Fronde (1652) regularly pillaged the quarters 
of Paris which they chanced to hold, precisely as if they had been 
in the heart of an enemy's country. 



204 The Mogul Emperors 

solidated a great state by wise, just, and 
even generous laws, and left a homogeneous 
empire behind him. We are used to repre- 
sent to ourselves the kingdom of the Great 
Mogul as a barbaric state, ruled by a semi- 
fabulous monster of bloodthirsty disposition. 
A more careful inspection shows us an 
empire which will bear close comparison 
with the states of Europe at the same epoch. 
The blood of Timur had been thinned so 
that it ran calmly in the veins of a great 
statesman and a good king, and the lust of 
mere conquest was replaced by a sincere 
desire for "the happiness and prosperity of 
the husbandman." 

The character of the Mogul Invaders of 
India In Timur's day is indicated in the first 
chapter of this book.' Their acts portray 
them. The history of Babar, six generations 
later, sufficiently displays the high ideals of 
culture which were held by the chief men 
of his time. Music, oratory, poetry, were cul- 
tivated even by sanguinary military leaders. 
They maintained at their courts, painters, 
architects, musicians, astronomers. The 



Shah Akbar the Great 205 

doctors of the religious law were learned in 
the fashion of the time, speculative and 
eloquent. Arabian Ideals of military chiv- 
alry prevailed, or had begun to prevail. 
Akbar opened the road of promotion to 
all the nations of Western Asia. Persians, 
Afghans, Turkis, Hindus, were welcome at 
his court, and all were on equal terms. In 
intellectual matters this intermixture of races 
and religions showed itself in great freedom 
and liberality In ideals of culture. Every 
famous book from the Shah-Nameh to the 
Mahabharata was in Akbar's library. In 
religious questions a revolution was accom- 
plished. The standards of military chivalry, 
which had been based on Turki and Arab 
models, were modified by the customs of the 
splendid Rajput soldiers. 

These processes went on during the reigns 
of Jahangir and of Shah Jahan. It was not 
until the reign of Aurangzeb that they re- 
ceived a check. We must figure to ourselves 
the period between Akbar and Aurangzeb as 
one of remarkable freedom. I suppose the 
peasants' condition was not especially differ- 



2o6 The Mogul Emperors 

ent from what it now is. But the host of 
officials, great and small, military and civil, 
were free to do or to think as they liked, 
provided, only, that they performed their 
duties fairly well, paid their regular tribute 
to the king, and did not meddle with plots 
against their rulers. No one interfered with 
their doings, and no one troubled himself 
about the opinions of his neighbors. There 
was no '' non-conformist conscience," and no 
Inquisition to be taken account of by any 
man. When Aurangzeb came to the throne, 
this happy state of things was changed, and 
the rigid law of Islam became the rule of 
conduct, as we shall see ; but India was 
under liberal rule during the years 1556- 
1658. 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 207 



CHAPTER V 

JAHANGIR, EMPEROR OF HINDUSTAN (a.D. 
1605-1627) 

A Contribution towards a Natural History 
of Tyrants 

But if CcEsar, the emperor, should adopt you, ito one could 
endure your arrogance. — Epictetus. 

The most interesting authority on the 
reign and character of this prince is the 
Diary of Sir Thomas Roe, EngHsh Envoy 
to his court from James the First. The 
narrative has real literary merits, and is 
inspired by a sound good sense. The con- 
trast of the characters of the emperor and 
the envoy, who esteemed each other, is most 
marked and most interesting. Sir Thomas's 
fournal commences as follows ; his very 
words are given when it is practicable : 

"March the i6th (161 5) we lost sight of 
the Lizard ; the 26th we saw the coast 



2o8 The Mogul Emperors 

of Barbary ; April the 14th we cut the Hne ; 
and on the 5th of June came to anchor in the 
bay of Saldanha, next the Cape of Good 
Hope." From thence the voyage continued 
till, on the 26th of September, Sir Thomas 
landed at Surat, where the British East 
India Company had its factory. Here he 
"continued till the 30th of October, suffering 
much from the (native) governor, who, by 
force, searched many chests and took out 
what he thought fit." On this day the envoy 
departed on his land journey to the capital 
of the Great Mogul. His mission was to 
conclude a treaty of commerce, and to col- 
lect outstanding debts due to English mer- 
chants. How important the commerce of 
England with India was becoming, may be 
read in Mill's history. The profits were 
immense. Eight voyages in the years 1603- 
16 1 3 yielded an average of 171 per cent.* 
By the 14th of November Sir Thomas had 
reached Brampore, which he guessed to be 
two hundred and twenty-three miles beyond 

* Tavernier says that the profits of the Portuguese were 500 or 
even 1000 per cent. 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 209 

Surat. Here he was met by an officer of 

the king, who conducted him to his lodgings 

in the town, which were " four chambers like 

ovens, and no bigger, made of brick in the 

side of a wall, so that I lay in my tent ; the 

officer making his excuse that it was the best 

lodging in the town, as I found it was." 

" I was conducted to visit the prince (Par- 

wiz, a son of the emperor), in whose outward 

court I found about a hundred gentlemen on 

horseback. He sat high in a gallery that 

went around. An officer told me that as I 

approached I must touch the ground with 

m.y head, which I refused, and went on to a 

place right under him, railed in, where I 

made him reverence, and he bowed his body; 

so I went within, where were all the great 

men of the town, with their hands before 

them like slaves. The place was covered 

overhead with a rich canopy, and under foot 

all with carpets. It was like a great stage, 

and the prince sat at the upper end of it. 

Having no place assigned me, I stood right 

before him, he refusing to admit me to come 

up the steps or to allow me a chair. Having 
14 



2IO The Mogul Einperors 

received my presents, he offered to go into 
another room where I should be allowed to 
sit ; but, by the way, he made himself drunk 
out of a case of bottles I gave him, and so 
the visit ended." This was our envoy's first 
struggle with Indian etiquette, and here, as 
always after, he stood up mightily for the 
dignity of an ambassador of the King of 
England. The termination of the ceremony 
was not unusual either for prince or empe- 
ror. From his meeting with the prince. Sir 
Thomas proceeded on his journey, passing 
through the country of the Rajah Rama, 
"who is lineally descended from Porus, that 
warlike Indian monarch overcome by Alex- 
ander the Great." 

On January lo, 1616, he had arrived at 
the court of Jahangir, and presented himself 
at the durbar (audience) at four in the after- 
noon. Here " the Mogul sits daily to enter- 
tain strangers, receive petitions and presents, 
give out orders, and to see and be seen. 
And here it will be proper to give some 
account of his court." 

" None but eunuchs come within the king s 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 211 

private lodgings, and his women, who guard 
him with wadike weapons. The Mogul 
every morning shows himself to the common 
people at a window. At noon he is there 
again to see elephants and wild beasts fight, 
the men of rank being under him within a 
rail. After noon he comes to the durbar 
aforementioned. After the supper, at eight 
of the clock, he comes down to the Guzalcan, 
a fair court, in the midst of which is a throne 
of freestone, where he sits. Here he dis- 
courses of indifferent things very affably. 
No business of state is done anywhere but 
at one of these places, where it is publicly 
canvassed, and so registered, which register 
may be seen for two shillings, and the com- 
mon people know as much as the council, 
so that every day the king's resolutions are 
the public news, and exposed to the censure 
of every scoundrel." 

" Before my audience I had obtained leave 
to use the customs of my country. At the 
durbar I was conducted right before him ; 
entering the outward rail, two noble slaves 
met to conduct me nearer. At the first rail 



212 The Mogul Emperors 

I made a low reverence, at the next another, 
and when under the king a third. His 
reception was very favorable, but does not 
need particularizing." 

" When I came in I found him sitting 
cross-legged on a little throne, all clad in 
diamonds, pearls, and rubies, before him a 
table of gold, on it about fifty pieces of gold 
plate, set all with stones, his nobility about 
him in their best equipages, whom he com- 
manded to drink, froliquely, several wines 
standing by in great flagons. So drinking 
and commanding others, his majesty and all 
his lords became the finest men I ever saw — 
of a thousand humours." 

Apparently the business of the envoy did 
not advance. '' March the first I rid out to 
see a house of pleasure of the king's, seated 
between two mighty rocks, and defended 
from the sun. It is a place of melancholy, 
delight, and safety." On the nth of March 
began the festival of the New Year, when 
great presents of all sorts were offered to 
the king, which, though not equal to report, 
were yet incredible enough. On the 12th 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 213 

of March came another audience, and on 
the 13th another, when "I pressed to have 
the peace and commerce with England settled 
after a solemn manner, which the Mogul 
ordered should be done." It may be noted 
here that delay in attending to the missions 
of envoys and in dismissing them was con- 
sidered a proof of the king's dignity, and 
that it was many a long day before Sir 
Thomas had his treaty signed and the debts 
due the English merchants settled. 

" On the 23d the Mogul condemned one 
of his own nation on suspicion of felony, and 
sent him to me in irons, as a slave, to dis- 
pose of at my will. This is looked upon as 
a great favor, for which I returned thanks ; 
adding that in England we had no slaves, 
nor thought it lawful to make the image of 
God equal to a beast, but that I would use 
him as a servant, and if he behaved himself 
well, give him his liberty. This the Mogul 
was well pleased with." On this, as on every 
other occasion, the English envoy conducted 
himself with sense, and with a simple dignity 
which evidently impressed the autocrat, who 



2 14 The Mogul Emperors 

was never tired of showing him marks of his 
appreciation. 

One must read the original narrative in 
all its detail to obtain the full sense of the 
dramatic contrast between these two men 
of different countries, whose mutual respect 
was founded on something deeper than race. 

At one of the durbars, Sir Thomas stood 
alone in a high place of honor. ** Asaph- 
Chan (the king's brother-in-law) insisted that 
I should rank myself among the nobility. 
I refused at first, but then removed to the 
other side, where only the prince and young 
Rama were, which more disgusted Asaph- 
Chan." A complaint to the king was of no 
avail, " so I kept my place in quiet." " On 
the 31st of March, the king dined at Asaph- 
Chan's house, all the way from the palace 
to it, which was an English mile, being laid 
under foot with silks and velvets sewed 
together, but rolled up as the king passed. 
They reported that the feast and present 
cost ;^i 50,000." Little progress was made 
in the business, as usual. 

" On June i8th, the king commanded one 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 2 1 5 

of his brother's sons, who had been per- 
suaded to become a Christian, with a design 
to make him odious to the people (so says 
Sir Thomas), to lay his hand on the head of 
a lion that was brought before the king, 
which he refused out of fear ; upon which 
the king bid his youngest son go touch the 
lion, who did so without receiving any hurt. 
Whereat the king took occasion to send his 
nephew away to prison, where he is never 
like to see daylight." * 

In July a gentlewoman of Nur-Mahal's was 
punished for a breach of decorum. " The 
poor woman was set up to the armpits in 
the earth close rammed about her, with her 
feet tied to a stake, so to continue three days 
and two nights. If she died not in that time 
she was to be pardoned." 

" On August the 9th, a hundred thieves 
were brought chained before the Mogul, with 
their accusation ; without further ceremony 

* Four of Jahangir's nephews were baptized by the Jesuits by the 
names of Philippo, Carlo, Henrico, Eduardo ; and the doors of the 
palace at Lahore bore "the images of the crucifix and of the Blessed 
Virgin," so says Herbert in his Travels. 



2i6 The Mogtil Emperors 

he ordered them to be carried away, the 
chief of them to be torn in pieces by dogs, 
the rest put to death. This was all the pro- 
cess and form," and the sentence was carried 
out. 

" Seven months were now spent in solicit- 
ing the signing and sealing of the articles of 
peace and commerce, and nothing obtained 
but promises from week to week and from 
day to day." During October the envoy 
recites some of the struggles between the 
king's sons for power at court. The wisest 
men foresee a civil war upon the king's 
death. " The whole court is full of whispers ; 
the nobility are sad ; the multitude, like itself, 
full of rumor and noise, without head or 
order, rages, but applies not to any proper 
means." 

Sir Thomas says : " The history of this 
country for variety of matter and the many 
subtle practices in the time of Akbar-Shah, 
the father of this king, were well worth 
writing; but because they come from such 
remote parts, many will despise them ; and 
by reason these people are esteemed bar- 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 2 1 7 

barous, few will believe them ; and therefore 
I forbear making them public, though I could 
deliver as many rare and notable acts of state, 
subtle evasions, policies, answers and adages, 
as I believe, for one age, would not easily be 
equalled." It is a loss not to have had this 
history from so good an observer. 

About this time came the ambassador of 
Persia, who was obliged to make the " knock- 
ing his head against the ground," which Sir 
Thomas had refused to do, " He brouorht 
for presents three times nine Arabian and 
Persian horses, this being a ceremonious 
number among them ; nine mules very fair 
and large ; seven camels laden with velvet ; 
two chests of Persian hangings ; one rich 
cabinet ; forty muskets ; five clocks ; one 
camel laden with cloth of gold ; eight carpets 
of silk ; two rubies ; twenty-one camel loads 
of wine; fourteen camel loads of distilled 
sweet waters ; seven of rose water ; seven 
daggers set with precious stones ; five swords 
set after the same manner; seven Venetian 
looking-glasses, and these so fair and rich 
that I was out of countenance when I heard 



2i8 The Mogtd Emperors 

it." In fact, the meanness of the presents 
which Sir Thomas had brought from England 
was a constant thorn in his side. Only 
the large mastiff-dogs seem to have been 
thoroughly appreciated ; and the emperor 
told him plainly that he could not understand 
why the monarch of so great a country 
as England should send so poor a list of 
presents. 

It is easily to be seen that the real success 
of Sir Thomas' mission was due to his per- 
sonality, and not to the fame of England or 
to the value of his gifts. 

"These people know the best of all kinds 
of merchandise, and are served by the Portu- 
guese, Venetians, and Armenians with all the 
rarities of Europe." 

Of the Persian envoy he says : " I caused 
his reception to be diligently observed, and 
found he was not favored above me at any 
point, but much less in several particulars." 

It is worth while to add that when the 
Persian ambassador took his leave, he pre- 
sented the king with other thirty horses, and 
received in return three thousand crowns. 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 219 

The king removed to a camp a few miles 
from his palace, and at one of his audiences 
the English envoy had a glimpse of "his two 
principal wives," one of whom must have 
been Nur-Mahal. " They were indifferently 
white, with black hair smoothed up ; but if 
there had been no other light, their dia- 
monds and pearls had sufficed to show them. 
When I looked up they retired, and were so 
merry that I supposed they laughed at me." 
" Then the king came down the stairs with 
such an acclamation of health to the king as 
would have outroared cannon. Then one of 
his servants came, and girt on the king's 
sword, and hung on his buckler set all over 
with diamonds and rubies, the belts being of 
gold, suitable. On his head he wore a rich 
turban with a plume of heron's feathers, not 
many, but long. On one side of his turban 
hung a ruby unset, as big as a walnut ; on the 
other side a diamond as large ; in the middle 
an emerald like a heart, much bigger. His 
staff was wound about with a chain of great 
pearls, rubies, and diamonds, drilled. About 
his neck he wore a chain of most excellent 



2 20 The Mogul Emperors 

pearls, the largest I ever saw. Above his 
elbows armlets set with diamonds, and on 
his wrist three rows of various sorts ; his 
hands bare, but on almost every finger a 
ring." 

The king and the queen, Nur-Mahal, rode 
in coaches made after the pattern of an Eng- 
lish carriage which Sir Thomas Roe had 
brought out as a present. They had not 
been willing to use so plain an affair as the 
original one, but had had others made on 
the same pattern, only covered with gold 
and gems, somewhat to his discomfiture. In 
Jahangir's Memoirs no reference is made to 
the mission from England, except a bare 
mention of these carriages. 

So they proceeded to the camp, which was 
a great wonder, having been set up and 
finished in four hours, yet it was not less than 
twenty English miles in compass. " The 
vale showed like a beautiful city, for the bag- 
gage made no confusion. I was ill provided 
with carriage, and ashamed of my equipage ; 
for five years' allowance would not have pro- 
vided me with an indifferent suit answerable 



Jakangtr, Emperor of Hindustan 221 

to the others, so I returned to my poor 
house." 

" You may add to all this," says another 
authority, "that the Grand Mogul keeps nigh 
him two or three thousand brave horses, to 
be always ready upon occasion ; as also eight 
or nine hundred elephants, and a vast num- 
ber of mules, horses, and porters to carry all 
the great tents and their cabinets, to carry 
his wives, kitchens, household stuff, Ganges 
water, and all the other necessaries for the 
field which he hath always about him, as if 
he were at home." 

The envoy was now obliged to follow the 
court in its migrations, finding transporta- 
tion and food as best he might. He took up 
his lodgings in tents, or sometimes on the 
abandoned castles of Rajput rajahs, so beau- 
tiful " that a banished Englishman might be 
content to live there." He learns the in- 
trigues of the court, and promises to tell a 
tale " which will discover a noble prince, an 
excellent wife, a faithful counsellor, a crafty 
step-mother, an ambitious son, a cunning 
favorite, all reconciled by a patient king, 



222 The Mogttl Emperors 

whose heart was not understood by any of 
all those." But I cannot find that he re- 
deems his promise. He sees this patient 
king embrace a dirty, ragged dervish after 
conversing with him familiarly for an hour, 
which left him " in admiration to see such 
virtue in a heathen prince, which I mention 
in emulation and sorrow ; wishing either that 
our Christian princes had this devotion, or 
that this zeal were guided by a true light of 
the gospel." 

" Laws these people have none written. 
The king's judgment binds ; who sits and 
gives judgment with much patience, both in 
civil and criminal causes, where sometimes 
he sees execution done by his elephants, with 
too much delight in blood. His governors 
of provinces rule by his commissions author- 
izing them, and take life and goods at 
pleasure." 

"In revenue the king doubtless exceeds 
either Turk or Persian ; the sums I dare not 
name ; but the reason. All the land is his ; 
no man has a foot. He maintains all that 
are not mechanics, by revenues bestowed on 



Jakangzr, Emperor of Hindustan 223 

them. Favor is got by frequent presents 
rich and rare. The Mogul is heir to all that 
die. He takes all their money, only leaving 
the widow and daughter what he pleases. 
To the sons of those that die worth two or 
three millions, he gives some small lordship 
to begin the world anew. He is of counte- 
nance cheerful, not proud by nature, but only 
by habit and custom, for at night he is 
very affable and full of gentle conversa- 
tion." 

One of these evening conversations is 
more minutely described : " The good king 
fell to dispute of the laws of Moses, Jesus, 
and Mahomet, and in drink was so kind, that 
he turned to me and said : I am a king ; you 
shall be welcome. Christians, Moors, Jews, 
he meddled not with their faith ; they came 
all in love, and he would protect them from 
wrong ; they lived under his safety, and none 
should oppress them ; and this often re- 
peated, but in extreme drunkenness, he fell 
to weeping and to divers passions, and so 
kept us till midnight." 

With this we leave Sir Thomas with re- 



224 The Mogul Emperors 

oret, so many of his own adventures being 
untouched upon. 

" The Jesuits have a church at Agra," says 
Bernier, " and a building which they call a 
college, where they privately instruct the 
children of (some) thirty Christian families, 
collected I know not how in Agra, and 
induced to settle there by the kind and chari- 
table aid which they receive from the Jesuits. 
This religious order was invited hither by 
Akbar, and that prince not only gave them 
an annual income for their maintenance, but 
permitted them to build churches in Agra 
and Lahore. The Jesuits found a still 
warmer patron in Jahangir, but they were 
sorely oppressed by Shah Jahan. That 
monarch deprived them of their pension, 
and destroyed the church at Lahore and the 
greater part of that at Agra." ^' 

Jahangir's attitude towards religion is well 
set forth in the following story, which may 
not be true, but which is ben trovato. The 
Muslim doctors had admonished him against 

* His empress, Mumtaz-i-Mahal, was, for some unknown 
reason, especially unfriendly to Christians. 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 225 

the use of forbidden meats, etc. ; Jahangir, 
becoming impatient, inquired in what rehgion 
the use of every kind of meat and drink was 
permitted. The reply was, in the Christian 
rehgion alone. '* We must, then," said the 
emperor, "all turn Christians." 

Professor Blochmann {Ain-z-Akbarz, pp. 
310, 477, 619) has collected a list of twenty- 
four of Jahangir's wives, and there easily 
may have been more. Their number may 
account for an amusing instance of the 
emperor's easy-going fashions. In his Me- 
moirs, Jahangir says that Prince Parwiz, 
his child, is the son of Zain Kokah's daugh- 
ter, whom he married in the forty-first year 
of Akbar's reign. There is no doubt what- 
ever that Parwiz was born in the thirty- 
fourth year, long before Jahangir had seen 
the daughter of Zain. Hence it follows, 
apparently, that Jahangir had forgotten to 
which one of his many wives he was Indebted 
for his second son. 

The acts of Jahangir are given at length 

in his own Memoirs and in some of the 

writings of the native historians. In the 
15 



2 26 The Mogul Emperors 

following chapter of this book the history of 
the last years of his reign is recited. But 
it is not the history which is of special 
interest to Europeans, and still less to 
Americans. Our desire is to comprehend 
the character of this powerful and autocratic 
ruler, as we understand that of Louis XIV 
of France from the Memoirs of Samt-Simon. 
The native historians are but poor substi- 
tutes for the literary duke who has written 
the annals of the reign of the Very Christian 
King. And Jahangir's Memoirs are seldom 
worth quoting, and give but a slight picture 
of his personality. I append a few extracts 
from various sources which have a sort of 
value, and reserve the more important for 
the next chapter, which treats of the reign 
of the emperor's wife, who, after all, was the 
real ruler of the state for many years. 

We read in the Memoirs of Jahangir : 
" One night I turned the discourse of my 
courtiers on the chase, and told them how 
fond of it I formerly was. At the same time 
it occurred to my mind whether all the ani- 
mals and birds I had killed could not be 



/ahangzr, Emperor of Hindttstan 227 

calculated." The result was that from his 
twelfth to his fiftieth year he had killed 
17,168 animals and birds with his own hand, 
"and the following is an account of them in 
detail." 

* * * * -Sfr * * 

Of these 86 were tigers, 90 wild boars, 
1,372 deer, 13,964 birds, etc. 

Two young nobles of the city were very 
dissipated, " lived in great pomp, and did not 
care for the emperor." They amused them- 
selves by passing the palace in pleasure-boats, 
noisily, though they had often been warned. 
Jahangir gave a hint to one of his officers, 
and the young men were incontinently assas- 
sinated, and the emperor's peace was dis- 
turbed no more. Jahangir was fond of cruel 
and unusual punishments. He revived the 
barbarous impalements and flayings alive 
which had been almost forgotten. He was 
ingenious, too. A number of Amirs had dis- 
graced the imperial cause by a defeat. He 
caused the portrait of each Amir to be 
painted in miniature, and, taking the por- 
traits in hand, one by one, he showered 



228 The Mogul Emperors 

abuse on each Amir before the assembled 
courtiers. In another instance, the emperor 
caused the offenders' heads to be shaved and 
women's veils to be thrown over their faces. 
Thus arrayed they were paraded through the 
city on donkeys, seated so as to face the 
donkeys' tails. Sewing the eyelids together 
was a favored mode of punishment, as also 
fastening the culprit inside the skin of a 
newly-killed animal. As the skin dried the 
victim perished. 

"With the object of acquiring information 
about the history of Kabul, I used to read 
Babar's Memoirs, which all, except four parts, 
was written with his own hand. To com- 
plete the work, I copied those parts myself, 
and at the end I added some paragraphs in 
the Turki language to show that they were 
written by me. Though I was brought up 
in Hindustan, yet I am not deficient in read- 
ing and writing Turki." 

Here is a specimen of the religious debates 
of which he was so fond. " One day I ob- 
served to some learned Hindus, that if the 
foundation of their religion rested on their 



Jakangzr, Emperor of Hindustan 229 

belief in the ten incarnate gods, it was en- 
tirely absurd, because in such a case it became 
necessary to admit that the Almighty, who 
is infinite, must possess a definite breadth, 
length, and depth." " After a long discourse 
they admitted that there was a God who had 
no corporeal form and of whom they had 
no definite notion " (which appears to have 
agreed with Jahangir's own ideas). They 
had represented him by these ten figures so 
as to raise their minds up to him. " I then 
told them they could not attain that end by 
this means." Vishnu and his ten (nine) 
incarnations seem to be referred to here at 
first, and the Great First Cause at last ; but 
the king is more practical and positive than 
explicit. 

Jahangir was fond — too fond — of the poet 
Urfi, a man of real talent. These verses are 
his: 

Cling to the hem of a heart which saddens at the plaintive voice of 
the nightingale ; for that heart knows something. 



The jHore I exert myself, the ?nore J come into trouble ; if I am 
calm, the ocean's centre is at the shore. 



230 The Mogul Emperors 

Not a grain shall be taken of that which thou hast reaped, but a 
harvest shall be demanded of that which thou hast not sown. 

The emperor sets down, in his Memoirs, 
that certain tribes " associate and intermarry 
with Hindus, giving and taking daughters. 
As for taking," he says, " it does not so much 
matter ; but as for giving their own daughters 
— heaven protect us ! " 

Here is one of the king's experiments — 
the trivial fooling of a muddled brain. " As 
it has been several times asserted that laugh- 
ter arises from eating saffron, his majesty 
determined on making a trial of its effects, 
and, therefore, sent for a condemned criminal 
and made him eat (a large quantity) in his 
presence. It did not occasion any change in 
him. On the next day he gave him double 
the quantity, but it did not even cause him to 
smile, much less to laugh." The royal ex- 
perimenter neglected an important element. 
He should first \\2.-^^ par dotted \\\^ criminal ! 

Jahangir describes, in his Memoirs, one of 
the classic feats of Indian jugglery : " They 
produced a chain, fifty cubits in length, and 
threw one end of it towards the sky, where 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hiitdustan 231 

it remained as if fastened to something. A 
dog was brought, and immediately ran up 
the chain and disappeared in the air. In 
the same manner a hog, a panther, a lion, 
and a tiger were successively sent up, and 
all equally disappeared. At last they took 
down the chain and put it into a bag, no one 
discovering in what way the different animals 
were made to vanish." Similar jugglers' 
tricks were shown to Ibn Batuta, the Arab 
traveller, in 1348. The Kazi, who sat next 
to him, made a skeptical comment on the 
whole performance. " Wallah ! " said he, " it 
is my opinion there has been neither going 
up nor coming down, neither marring nor 
mending; 'tis all hocus-pocus." The emperor 
is a capital witness. As this probably 
occurred in the daytime, he was, in all likeli- 
hood, sober. One could not ask for better 
evidence for this famous trick, which has 
been described by others also. If Indian 
jugglers can hypnotize an entire audience, 
and if they can then suggest to each member 
of it that he sees what is desired, and if 
every individual can be forced to recollect 



232 The Mogul Emperors 

all the details of the performance, the trick 
is explicable. Otherwise, we must share 
Jahangir's bewilderment/^" 

In the sixth year of his reign (a.h. 1020), 
J ahangir coined his famous gold mohur. On 
one face is a portrait of the emperor in the 
act of raising a wine-cup to his lips ; on the 
other is the sun in the constellation of Leo. 
The inscription on the coin is in Persian. 
Perhaps no more extraordinary coin was ever 
minted. The emperor broke with all tradi- 
tions. The Muhammadans — at least, of the 
Sunni sect — did not permit the making of 
statues and effigies. Wine was abhorred of 
all good Muslims, and on this coin it was 
celebrated by the head of the state, who was 
also the head of the church. It was as if the 
Pope should strike a medal defiling the cross 
and denying the Holy Ghost.f 

* Since the foregoing was written I liave noticed that Mr. 
Andrew Lang {Contemporary Review for September, 1893) seems 
to regard the explanation by hypnotic illusion as, at least, plausible ; 
and Mr. Frank Stockton has adopted it, out and out, in his tale of 
The Magic Egg {The Century for June, 1894). 

\ It is not strictly correct to say that Jahangir was the head of 
the orthodox church. The successor of Muhammad is that person 
who has the custody of the relics of the prophet (his cloak, teeth, 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 233 

The face is interesting, and it is probably 
an unflattered likeness, as it resembles por- 
traits of Jahangir which are accepted as 
authentic. The jaw is heavy, the nose long, 
and broad at the base, and the expression 
astute and sly. In the same year another 
coin was minted, where the wine-cup is ex- 
changed for a book (which can only be the 
Kuran), and on which the expression of the 
emperor's face is entirely changed. His atti- 
tude is one of dignity ; his face is softened 
and refined ; he is no longer the violator, but 
the protector, of the law. 

It has been surmised that the first coin 
gave such occasion of scandal (as well it 
might) that the second was struck to take its 
place. This may be so, but it then becomes 
difficult to explain why another coin was 
minted in the year a.h. 1023, three years 
later, in which the wine-cup again appears. 
The sun on these coins serves to recall the 
fact that the emperor was born on a Sunday. 

beard, etc.), and who rules the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. 
These titles belong to the Sultan of Constantinople (the Khalife=: 
successor). But in India the orthodox doctors of the law had 
declared the emperor to be the head of the church. 



2 34 The Mogul Emperors 

Jahangir also caused a silver medal to be 
struck soon after his father's death, which 
bears the effigy of Akbar. The face has 
only a moustache, and not the beard of the 
orthodox Muslim. Yet the obverse of the 
medal bears the profession of faith : There 
is no God but God ; Muhammad is the 
Apostle of God. 

With this we may leave this nest of 
tyrants. The atmosphere in which they 
lived is foreign to us, and their actions seem 
wild and barbarous to us Western folk who 
live our orderly lives between well-drawn 
lines which we do not overstep. *' Custom 
makes cowards of us all," and habit makes us 
unreflecting. These Oriental despots were 
no more savage or vindictive or careless than 
the Csesars ; and we have long ago accepted 
them as part of our ancestry. 

It is clear that Sir Thomas Roe, a model 
Briton, was continually and unconsciously 
comparing the Emperor Jahangir with his 
own English king, not always to the advan- 
tage of the latter. Even to us, who have 
crossed the seas and the centuries, there is 



Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan 235 

something not totally unfamiliar in this 
Oriental nature freely displayed under strange 
and outlandish conditions. 

Coehim, non animu^n mutant, qui trans 
mare currttnt. 

Note. — The description of Jahangir's coins on pages 232 et seq. 
was written after consulting the older authorities (Marsden, etc.), 
the only ones then available to me. It is not strictly correct in 
several respects. Those interested should refer to Dr. R. S. Poole's 
Coins of the Moghtil Emperors, London, 1892, pages Ixxx, 62, etc., 
where plates of these coins are given. 



236 The Mogul Emperors 



CHAPTER VI 

NUR-MAHAL (tHE LIGHT OF THE PALACE), 
EMPRESS OF HINDUSTAN (a.D. 161I-1627) 

In the history of the reigns of the Great 
Moguls, the women of the royal house 
seldom appear, except in the character of 
devoted or intriguing wives and mothers, 
whose words are never heard on this side of 
the curtain which shuts them away from the 
world. The fierce light which beats upon 
the throne penetrates the harem only to 
make a twilight of mystery and intrigue. 
There is one great and striking exception in 
the person of the Empress Nur- Mahal, whose 
reign was nearly contemporaneous with that 
of King James I. of England, the successor of 
Elizabeth, and who may fairly be compared 
with that great English queen. 

We are more or less familiar in the Western 
world with the power of women in govern- 
ment. But our Western heroines — Frede- 







NUR-MAHAL 



Nur-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 237 

gonde, Joan of Arc, Madame de Stael — have 
been personages who could be seen and 
heard. The Indian queen, after the time of 
Babar, was confined to the harem, and could 
be seen only by her nearest relations, and 
could be heard only from behind the curtain. 
I have met but two works which give a 
realiizing sense of the power of Oriental 
women ; namely, the brilliant novel of Kip- 
ling and Balestier, The Naulakha (1892), 
and the Memoirs of a certain wazir, one 
Nizamu-1-Mulk Tusi (a.d. 1092), some eight 
hundred years earlier. The wazirs whole 
history is interesting. His accounts of the 
power of female intrigue are pathetic. " Now, 
from what I have said, the disadvantages 
of the ladies of the royal household being 
against us (wazirs) may be learned. But 
the advantages of their being in our favor 
are equally numerous," as he goes on to 
show by a story too long to relate. He 
quotes the words of a powerful minister who 
resigned his office and went to govern a 
remote province, as an example. " What 
made him prefer it to a rank in which he 



238 The Mogul Emperors 

exercised influence over the whole king- 
dom?" "O Imam!" the ex-minister says, 
" I have not told this secret even to my sons, 
but I will not conceal the truth from you. 
I have resigned that power on account of 
Jamila Kandahari (one of the queen's ladies). 
For years I had the management of all the 
government in my hands, and she thwarted 
me In everything. For this reason there was 
darkness before my eyes, and I could find no 
remedy against the evil. Now I have sought 
retirement, and have procured release from 
all such troubles. If Allah pleases, I shall 
escape her machinations in this distant prov- 
ince." 

The Emperor Jahangir had succeeded 
Akbar in the year 1605. ^^ the thirty-first 
year of Akbar's reign he had rebelled against 
his father, and had set up a separate govern- 
ment in the Penjab and appropriated the rev- 
enue (thirty lacs of rupees) to his own use. 
To remove his chief enemy at court, he had 
basely murdered his father's prime minister 
and attached friend, the learned Abul-fazl, 
and had embittered the last days of his great 



Nur-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 239 

sire by violent, cruel, and rebellious acts. 
" About the close of my father's reign Abul- 
fazl was wearing on his plausible exterior 
the jewel of probity, which he sold to my 
father at a high price. He was not my 
friend. His bearing fully convinced me that 
if he were allowed to arrive at court he 
would do everything in his power to excite 
the indignation of my father against me. 
Under this apprehension I invited Nar 
Singh to annihilate Abul-fazl on his journey, 
promising him favors. God aided the enter- 
prise ; Abul-fazl's followers were put to 
flight, and he himself murdered. His head 
was sent to me at Allahabad." Such is 
Jahangir's own account. 

Akbar's death is ascribed to his vexation 
at a disgraceful and public quarrel between 
Jahangir and his son Khosrou about the 
merits of their respective elephants at a fight 
of animals. 

He was remorseless, even vindictive, in 
the punishment of crimes against the state 
— that is, against himself — and this seems in 
a large measure to have been a matter of 



240 The Mogul Emperors 

settled policy on his part. Jahangir had an 
intimate horror of everything that tended to 
disturb the indifferent thoughtlessness of his 
self-indulgent and careless life. In the early 
portion of his reign he was obliged to stamp 
out a rebellion fomented by his son Khosrou, 
His own words are : " I entered the castle at 
Lahore, and took my seat in the royal pavil- 
ion built by my father, and I directed that 
a number of sharp stakes should be set 
up, upon which thrones of misfortune and 
despair I caused the seven hundred traitors 
to be impaled alive. Than this there cannot 
be," he goes on, " a more excruciating pun- 
ishment, for the culprits die in lingering 
torture." 

His son was finally captured, paraded 
between the lines of impaled victims, and 
then imprisoned. He spent the time in 
tears and groans for his past misconduct, 
and no doubt in deadly fear for his own life. 
He doubtless recalled his father's express 
declaration that " Sovereignty does not re- 
gard the relation of father .and son ; and 
it is said a king should deem no one 



Nur-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 241 

his relation." Kingship knows no kin- 
ship. 

Jahangir always evinced "too much delight 
In blood," and his violence was often due to 
intoxication by wine or opium, " From that 
time I took to wine drinking," he says, "and 
from day to day took more and more, until 
it had no effect upon me, and I resorted to 
drinking spirits. In the course of nine years 
I got up to twenty cups of spirit, fourteen of 
which I drank in the day, and six at night." 
Finally, he was warned to stop by a faithful 
(and courageous) physician. " His advice 
was good, and life was dear ; and for fifteen 
years I have kept to six cups, neither more 
nor less." Opium took the place of the 
abandoned cups. Two of his brothers died 
from drunkenness. 

In spite of this dark picture, there are 
many excellent, even admirable, traits in his 
character. He was self-indulgent and capri- 
cious, rather than deliberately vicious. The 
very first act of his reign was to set up the 
"chain of justice" in his palace at Agra — 

a golden chain sixty feet long, reaching from 
16 



242 The Mogul Emperors 

the ground to his chamber. On this chain 
were sixty golden bells, and a suitor for 
justice could call the emperor's attention to 
his claim without the intervention of any 
person.* 

His Memoirs, from which I have already 
quoted, are addressed to his sons and dis- 
ciples, and begin thus : 

" First, let them know that the world is not 
eternal, and that the less care they have for 
it the better. Act towards your inferiors as 
you wish that your superiors should act 
towards you." It is clear that the Jesuits 
of Goa had left their mark ; and indeed he 

* The idea was not original. Tiie drums of Humayun were 
established for the same end. Sultan Shamsu-d-din Altamsh, 
(A.D. 1 211) at Delhi, " made an order that any man who suffered 
from injustice should wear colored clothes Now all the inhabit- 
ants of India wear white clothes, so that whenever he rode abroad 
and saw any one in a colored dress he inquired into his grievance, 
and look means to render him justice. But he was not satisfied 
(even) with this plan, and said, ' Some men suffer injustice in the 
night, and I wish to give them redress.' So he placed at the door 
of his palace two marble lions on two pedestals. These lions had 
iron chains round their necks from which hung great bells. The 
victim of injustice came at night and rung the bell, and when the 
Sultan heard it he inquired into the case and gave satisfaction to 
the complainant." 



Niir-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 243 

was wonderfully tolerant of all religions, 
although he did not (openly) go so far in 
this direction as his father. " No king was 
ever more generous and kind to beggars" or 
to religious mendicants — fakirs — or more 
anxious for new light from holy men. 

Jahangir had been born in the house of a 
famous Muslim saint, and was at first called 
by his name (Selim). 

" A famous place of worship is in this 
neighborhood," he says, "and I went to see 
it in the possible chance of meeting some 
fakir from whose society I might derive 
advantage ; but such a man is as rare as the 
philosopher's stone, and all that I saw was 
a small fraternity without any knowledge of 
God, the sight of whom filled my heart with 
nothing but regret." 

He encouraged all sorts of learning at his 
court, and was lavish in distribution of alms 
from his audience window every week (on 
Sundays). He was fond of architecture and 
art, and devoted to the beauties of natural 
scenery and flowers, even childishly so. On 
his way to Kashmir the army marched along 



244 ^-^^ Mogul Emperors 

a river bed, " and the oleander bushes were 
in full bloom, and of exquisite color, like 
peach-blossoms. I ordered my attendants 
to bind bunches of the flowers in their tur- 
bans, and I thus devised a beautiful garden." 
At another camp the flowers were so beauti- 
ful that *' it was a sight such that it was 
impossible to take one's eyes off it." He 
goes on, " As the air was very charming 
(and the flowers beautiful), I indulged myself 
in drinking wine. In short, I enjoyed myself 
amazingly on this march." 

It is surprising to us to meet this appre- 
ciation of nature in the Mogul character, but 
it is a genuine quality. Chengiz-Khan, that 
bloodthirsty savage, in describing a spot in 
Tartary, says, "It is a beautiful grazing 
ground for roebucks, and a charming resting 
place for an old man " — as he then was. To 
the Moguls, nature was beautiful, but it was 
something outside of themselves ; the Greeks 
felt themselves a part of it. 

Jahangir goes on to say, "Kashmir is a 
delightful country in the seasons of autumn 
and of spring. I visited it and found it 



Ntir- Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 245 

even more charming than I had anticipated. 
There is no other place in the world where 
saffron is so abundantly cultivated. The 
fields of saffron are sometimes two miles in 
length, and they look very beautiful at a 
distance. It has such a strong smell that 
people get a headache from it. I asked the 
Kashmirians whether it had any such effect 
upon them, and was surprised by their reply, 
which was, that they did not even know 
what headache was." "The surface of the 
land is so covered with green that it requires 
no carpet to be spread upon it." The 
place Vv^as full of wonders, and they showed 
the sceptical king a fountain of " unfathom- 
able depth." He ordered it sounded by a 
stone and a rope, and the depth turned out 
to be nine feet. 

He was a mighty hunter,^ brave, fond of 
manly sports, devoted and affectionate to his 
friends, always providing that their actions 
did not affect the safety or welfare of the 
state, and again Vetat cetait lui; and cruel 

* He had killed eighty-six tigers with his own hand, and ninety 
wild boars. 



246 The Mogul Empei'ors 

and vindictive in the contrary case. He was 
deeply attached to his first wife, the daughter 
of the Rajah Bhagwan Das of Amber, and 
the mother of his rebellious son Khosrou. 
" How can I describe her excellence and 
good nature? Her affection for me was such 
that she would have given a thousand sons 
as a ransom for one hair of mine. She was 
my first bride, and I was married to her in 
youth. Her death had such an effect upon 
me that I did not care to live. For four 
days and nights I did not care to eat or 
drink." It is recorded, also, and it is very 
likely to be true, that after Nur- Mahal had 
become his empress he declared, " Before I 
married her, I never knew the real meaning 
of marriao^e." The Persian woman was made 
of different clay from the daughters of the 
Rajput princes. 

These extracts from his own sayings give 
a picture of the capricious despot who 
succeeded to the just and benevolent Ak- 
bar. 

Professor Dowson, the editor of Elliott's 
History of India as told by its own Histo- 



Nitr-Mahal, Empress of Hindzistan 247 

rzans, has made a calm estimate of Jahangir's 
character. 

" The autobiography proves Jahanglr to 
have been a man of no common abiUty. He 
records his weaknesses and confesses his 
faults with candor, and a perusal of this work 
alone would leave a favorable impression of 
his character and talents. He was fond 
of jewels, of flowers, of architecture, a lover 
of nature, a mighty hunter. He seems to 
have been just, and even generous, when he 
was sober; but even as prince-royal he was 
noted for his ruthless punishments when he 
was in his cups." 

Such was the king who received the 
sovereignty of India from the dying Akbar, 
and V\^ho then " began to win the hearts of 
all the people and to rearrange the withered 
world." While he was yet crown-prince, 
he had seen in the women's apartments a 
young girl of remarkable beauty for whom 
he formed a passionate attachment. This 
was Mihrunnisa, afterwards Nur-Mahal. 
Her mother found means to lay the case 
before Akbar, who remonstrated with his 



248 The Mogul Emperors 

son, and who, the better to guard against a 
mesalliance, married the girl to one of his 
own officers, Shir-Afghan- Khan, on whom he 
bestowed a government in distant Bengal. 
The newly wedded pair departed to their 
government, and the prince was duly married 
to the grand-daughter of a great rajah, and 
became a power in the state, warring and 
making war, sometimes for his father, oftener 
on his own account in rebellion. 

The grandfather of Nur-Mahal had been 
wazir to the governor of Khorassan. In 
consequence of adverse circumstances his 
son Mirza Ghiyas Beg set out for Hindu- 
stan to retrieve his fortunes. His caravan 
was plundered, and he was reduced to abject 
poverty. When he reached Kandahar, in the 
year 1585, his wife was delivered of a girl 
child, Mihrunnisa — the sun of women — 
afterwards called Nur-Mahal. So desperate 
had their condition become that the infant 
was exposed on the highway to perish. One 
of the chief merchants of the caravan, see- 
ing the beauty of the child, and moved by 
pity, took her up and resolved to educate 



Nur-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 249 

her as his own daughter. His first care was 
to seek for a nurse, and the only available 
nurse in the party was, naturally, the child's 
mother. The relation thus strangely brought 
about was the turning point in their career. 
When they reached the city of Fathpur, 
Ghiyas Beg was presented to the Emperor 
Akbar, and in a short time he was raised 
to the office of superintendent of the house- 
hold, and the fortunes of the family were 
made. 

" He was considered exceedingly clever 
and skilful both in writing and in transact- 
ing business. He had studied the old 
poetry, and had a nice appreciation of the 
meaning of words, and his handwriting was 
bold and elegant" — accomplishments which 
would commend him to the emperor. 
" His leisure moments were devoted to the 
study of poetry and style ; and his gener- 
osity and beneficence to the poor were such 
that no one ever turned disappointed from 
his door." He was on the high road to 
prosperity, and improved his opportunities 
to the full. "In the taking of bribes he 



250 The Mogul Emperors 

certainly was most uncompromising and fear- 
less " ! His wife, too, was a woman of note. 
Jahangir relates that she invented attar of 
roses.^ " She conceived the idea of collect- 
ing the oil which rises to the surface when 
rose-water is heated, and the oil was found 
to be a powerful perfume." The daughter, 
also, was unusually accomplished in the arts 
of painting and fine needlework, it is said, and 
she wrote a few Persian poems also. Their 
son Asaf-Khan rose to be prime minister 
under the succeeding reign, and no subject of 
an Indian king ever enjoyed a like pros- 
perity. In 1 64 1 he died, and was buried near 
the tomb of the Emperor Jahangir, his mas- 
ter. His palace in Lahore had cost a mil- 
lion dollars, and the jewels, plate, and money 
which he left were valued at over twelve 
millions. His daughter Arjamand (after- 
wards Mumtaz-i-Mahal) married the Prince 
Khurram (afterwards Shah Jahan). 

In the meantime Jahangir's first wife had 
died, and he had ascended the throne. In 

* Antar, an Arab novel of the eighth century, mentions attar of 
roses, however. 



Ntcr-AIakal, Empress of Hindustan 251 

the first year of his reign he sent his foster- 
brother Kutbu-d-Din to Bengal as viceroy, 
and charged him with a mission to procure 
the divorce of Nur-Mahal and to send her to 
him. Details regarding these negotiations 
are not known, but it is certain that they 
were received with anger by Shir-Afghan, 
her husband ; and probably Nur-Mahal never 
heard of them at all. At all events, she 
appears to have been sincerely attached to 
her first husband. 

In the second year of the reign, the vice- 
roy, having received commands to send Shir- 
Afghan to court, made an official visit to 
his government. The men of the viceroy 
crowded around Shir-Afghan, who had only 
two attendants, and who asked " quietly " 
what this kind of proceeding meant. The 
viceroy ordered his men to stand apart, and 
engaged in a conversation in which, no doubt, 
the desires of the emperor were again de- 
clared, and a promise of immunity given in 
case the husband should prove docile and 
complaisant. However this may be, the out- 
raged noble immediately killed the viceroy 



252 The Mogul Emperors 

with a dagger which he had concealed, and 
was himself at once cut to pieces by the 
viceroy's troops.* 

The future empress was sent to Agra, and 
was attached to the suite of the empress 
dowager. Jahangir was sorely distressed by 
the death of his foster-brother in such a 
cause, and Nur-Mahal seems to have re- 
pulsed his offer of marriage with disgust, and 
to have made the emperor forget her. "She 
remained some time without notice." This 
" some time " must have been about four 
years, for it was not until the sixth year (a.d. 
161 1 ) of the reign that "the days of mis- 
fortune drew to a close, and the stars of her 

* One of the historians relates the end of Shir-Afghan differ- 
ently. He says that Shir was not killed outright (which is un- 
likely), but managed to drag himself to the door of his house, 
intending to kill his wife rather than to lei her fall into Jahangir's 
hands. Nur-Mahal's mother would not let him enter, and declared 
to him that his wife had already committed suicide by throwing 
herself into a well. " Having heard the sad news, Shir-Afghan 
went to the heavenly mansions." The Muslim comment on such 
stories is appropriate here — Allah knows if this be true. Jahangir 
remarks of Shir-Afghan's death in his Memoirs that he hopes "the 
black-faced wretch will forever remain in hell," which seems cruel 
and in keeping with his character. 



Ntir- Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 253 

good fortune commenced to shine, and to 
wake as it were from a deep sleep." " The 
bride's chamber was prepared, the bride was 
decorated, and desire began to arise. Hope 
was happy. A key was found for closed 
doors, a restorative for broken hearts ; and 
on a certain New Year's festival she (again) 
attracted the love and affection of the king." 
Thus lamely does the native chronicler recite 
the history. " She was soon made the favor- 
ite wife of his majesty. She received at 
first the title of Nur-Mahal {the light of the 
palace^, and after some days that of Nur- 
Jahan-Begam {the queen, the light of the 
world)." 

Up to this time she had led the usual life 
of an Oriental lady of rank, hidden from the 
eyes of men, and having only an occult influ- 
ence upon the petty affairs of a small gov- 
ernment. At one step she became the chief 
personage in India. " All her relatives were 
elevated to the hig-hest offices of the state. 
Her father became prime minister, and the 
king and his relatives were thus deprived of 
all power. Nur-Mahal managed the whole 



254 1^^^ Mogul Emperors 

affairs of the realm, and honors of every 
description were at her disposal, and nothing 
was wanting to make her an absolute mon- 
arch, except reading the Khutba * in her 
name." The Persian child who had been 
abandoned in the desert had become the 
veritable ruler of all India. She was now 
twenty- six years old. " Day by day," says 
another historian, " her influence and dignity 
increased. No grant of land was bestowed 
upon any woman, except under her seal. 
She was granted the rights of sovereignty. 
She would sit in the balcony of her palace 
while the nobles would present themselves 
(as to a king) and listen to her dictates. 
Coin was struck in her name with this 
superscription : 

By order of King Jahaitgir, gold ha." a htmdred spletidors 
added to it by receiving the impression of the name of Nur-Jahan 
the queen. 

" She signed all fannans jointly with the 
king. At last her authority reached such a 
pitch that the king was such only in name. 

* The official prayers. 



Nur-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 255 

"She commands and governs at this day 
in the king's harem with supreme authority, 
having cunningly removed out of the harem, 
either by marriage or other handsome ways, 
all the other women who might give her any 
jealousy ; and having also in the court made 
many alterations by deposing and displacing 
almost all the old captains and officers, and 
by advancing to dignities other new ones of 
her own creatures, and particularly those 
of her blood and alliance." 

By this time the affairs of the kingdom 
were in excellent shape, and the self-indulgent 
Jahangir laughed and said that he had be- 
stowed the government on the most com- 
petent. As for himself, he asked only wine 
and meat. When he was ill he dismissed 
the physicians (who were indeed of small 
account), and depended only on the empress, 
" whose sense and experience " exceeded 
theirs. " It is impossible to describe the 
beauty and wisdom of the queen ; in any 
matter that was presented to her, if a diffi- 
culty arose she immediately solved it." She 
was benevolent to all, protecting some from 



256 The Mogul Emperors 

tyranny, and portioning penniless orphans. 
"She won golden opinions from all people," 
The greatest of all her benefits was in modi- 
fying the tyrannical and capricious conduct 
of the emperor, and in introducing by her 
own intelligence and good taste, powerfully 
aided in the wise conduct of state affairs by 
her father, now wazir, something like a 
steady policy. The affairs of the kingdom 
were prosperous ; justice of a sort was easily 
attainable ; the court was magnificent by her 
taste ; liberal through Jahangir's good nature 
and her tact. The praise which has been 
bestowed on another Indian Sultana,* is 
justly her due. " She was endowed with 
every princely virtue, and those who scruti- 
nize her actions most severely will find in 
her no fault but that she was a woman." 

Jahangir had four sons ; Khosrou, the 
eldest, had been in open rebellion and was 
in disgrace. His father had always disliked 
him, but the people attributed his exclusion 
from the court to the influence of Asaf- 
Khan and the empress. He died suddenly 

■" Rezia Begum, circa A.D. 1240. 



Ntir-Mahal, Empress of Hindustmi 257 

"of a colic," while in the custody of his 
brother Shah Jahan, at a time when the 
emperor was ill ; and his death was attrib- 
uted (very likely falsely) to his keeper. 
Prince Parwiz, the second son, was a brave 
and dissipated soldier, and little more. Shah 
Jahan had shown very high military talents, 
and had obtained great successes. He had 
married a niece of Nur-Mahal's,* and was 
sustained at court (at this time) by her 
powerful influence ; and for this reason, and 
because of his marked talent for government, 
he was the favorite of his father. To all 
people, even to the greatest nobles, he was 
cold and haughty. " He was flattered by 
some, envied by others, loved by none." 

The youngest son of Jahangir was Prince 
Shahriyar, who was affianced to the daughter 
who was born to Nur-Mahal of her alliance 
with the unfortunate Shir-Afghan-Khan. Up 
to the time of their engagement, Nur-Mahal 

* His favorite wife was Arjamand, better known as Mumtaz-i- 
Mahal (the exalted of the palace), the daughter of Asaf-Khan ; 
the niece consequently of Nur-Mahal. She was born in 1590, and 
at her death, in 1630, she was buried in the Taj-Mahal; she bore 
many sons and daughters to Shah Jahan. 
17 



258 The Mogul Emperors 

had been a strong partisan of Shah Jahan. 
But his success had made him overbearing, 
and the empress began to reaHze that she 
could never mould him to her purposes. 
Her influence was thus transferred to the 
cause of Shahriyar, where her interest lay. 
At this very juncture the father of Nur- 
Mahal died, which was all the more unfor- 
tunate, as the contentions of the princes and 
of their various partisans among the high 
nobles began to be troublesome. Her 
brother Azaf-Khan, who became prime min- 
ister in his father's stead, was far too 
weak to master events, which went from ill 
to worse. The power of Shah Jahan grew 
daily, and if it were to be curbed at all, it 
must be done at once. Accordingly Nur- 
Mahal cast about for a general who should 
be devoted to her cause, to lead the imperial 
armies. Her eye fell upon Mahabet-Khan, 
one of the great nobles. Mahabet-Khan 
was a saiyid, a descendant of the Prophet, 
of high family. His lineage is to be traced 
(if we are to believe one of his family) 
" directly to the prophet Moses." Mahabet- 



Nur-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 259 

Khan in his youth entered the service of 
Jahangir, then crown-prince, and became a 
prime favorite with him by (treacherously) 
murdering a Hindu rajah who stood in the 
prince's way. Sir Thomas Roe calls him, 
however, a noble and generous man, well 
beloved by all men ; and he had risen to be 
the most eminent of all the nobles. This 
general, accompanied for a time by the 
emperor, and later by Prince Parwiz, drove 
Shah Jahan away from the vicinity of Agra 
and into the Deccan ; and so thorough was 
Shah Jahan's defeat that Jahangir felt at 
liberty to go, for two successive summers, to 
Kashmir. 

The emperor had not been a very loyal 
and docile son to Akbar, and had given his 
father much pain and anxiety by his open 
opposition. All this was returned to him 
ten-fold by the conduct of his own son 
Shah Jahan. Jahangir does not mention 
him by name in parts of his Memoirs, but 
calls him "the wretch." "Whenever the 
word ' wretch ' occurs here, it is my son who 
is referred to." " The pen cannot describe 



26o The Mogul Emperors 

what I have done for him, nor the anxiety 
and grief which oppress me during the (miH- 
tary) marches which I am obHged to make 
in pursuit of him who is no longer my son." 

The close connection of Mahabet-Khan 
with Prince Parwiz led to the fear that he 
would endeavor to place this prince upon 
the throne, and it was resolved to ruin 
him. Accordingly Asaf-Khan recalled him 
to the court, '* to bring him to disgrace, 
and to deprive him of honor, property, and 
life. But he had cleverly seen through 
Asaf-Khan's designs, and had brought 
with him four or five thousand Rajput 
warriors united in one cause." He also 
brought with him the war-elephants. " The 
abiding place of the emperor was on the 
bank of the River Behat, " where a bridge 
had been built. Mahabet-Khan with his 
army came to the court at this bridge. 
" Asaf-Khan, notwithstanding the presence 
of so brave and daring an enemy, was so 
heedless of the emperor's safety, that he 
left him on that side of the river with the 
children and women. He sent over also 



Nur- Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 261 

the baggage, the treasure, the arms, etc., 
even to the very domestics. Mahabet-Khan 
perceived that his Hfe and honor were 
at stake, and that he had not a single 
friend at court." He resolved on a bold 
stroke. With about two hundred Rajputs 
he suddenly appeared at the chief entrance 
to the royal tents. Let us quote the account 
of one of the royal household who was an 
eye-witness. "■ Mahabet-Khan rode to the 
door of the state room and alighted. I 
then went forward, and in my simplicity 
exclaimed, ' This presumption and temerity 
exceeds all bounds. If you will wait a 
moment, I will go in and make a report. 
He did not trouble himself to answer." 
"His attendants tore down a board parti- 
tion. The emperor came out from behind 
it, and seated himself. The Khan ap- 
proached him respectfully, and said, ' I 
have assured myself that escape from the 
hatred of Asaf-Khan is impossible, and that 
I shall be put to death in shame. I have 
therefore boldly and presumptuously thrown 
myself on your Majesty's protection. If I 



262 The Mogtil Emperors 

deserve death or punishment, give the 
order, that I may suffer it in your pres- 
ence. 

But it was for the Khan to make terms, 
for his troops flocked in, and the emperor 
was a prisoner without a blow. Jahangir 
was wild with rage, but almost instantly 
controlled himself, and began that course 
of dissimulation which led to his release in 
the end. He consented to ride out before 
the troops on an elephant to the hunting- 
ground, and was then forced to go to the 
Khan's quarters. All this time Mahabet- 
Khan had taken no thought of Nur-Mahal, 
and he determined to make her a prisoner 
also. " But, as it happened, Nur-Mahal, 
thinking that his Majesty had gone out 
hunting, took the opportunity to pass over 
the river to pay a visit to her brother 
Asaf-Khan. " Mahabet-Khan bitterly re- 
pented of the blunder he had made in not 
securing her at once, and he proceeded with 
the emperor to the house of Prince Shah- 
riyar, where they spent the night. 

" After Nur-Mahal had crossed the river, 



Ntir-Mahal, Empress of Hindttstan 263 

she summoned all the chief nobles, and ad- 
dressed them in reproachful terms. ' This,' 
she said, * has happened through your neg- 
lect and stupid arrangements.'^ What 
never entered into the imagination of any 
one has come to pass, and now you stand 
stricken with shame for your conduct. You 
must do your best to repair this evil.' " 

The bridge had been destroyed, and the 
nobles resolved to pass the river at a ford, 
and to give battle to the rebel. 

The ford was a bad one, and everything 
was in confusion. " I (says the officer 
whose account is quoted above) had 
crossed one branch of the river, and was 
standing on the brink of the other, watch- 
ing the working of destiny. At this time 
an officer of the empress came and said, 
' The Begam wants to know if this is a 
time for delay and irresolution. Strike 
boldly forward.'" The empress herself was 
in the press, mounted on an elephant, and 

* It is impossible not to suspect treachery on the part of Asaf- 
Khan. Though Nur-Mahal was his sister, his daughter was the 
wife of Shah Jahan. 



264 The Mogul Emperors 

nearly reached the opposite shore, which 
was defended by swarms of Rajputs. Her 
attendant in the howdah was wounded, and 
the empress pulled out the arrow and was 
covered with the blood. This could not 
affright her, for she was a brave and skil- 
ful hunter who had killed tigers with a 
single shot* However, she was at last 
forced to turn back, and the army was 
defeated. Asaf-Khan fled to his fort, which 
was invested and captured, and Asaf bound 
himself to support the cause of Mahabet- 
Khan. The emperor and Nur-Mahal re- 
mained prisoners of the Khan, who gave 
orders in their name. 

"His majesty, in his great good nature, 
and gentleness,f had now become reconciled 



* In Jahangir's own Memoirs we read: " My huntsmen reported 
that there was a tiger in the neighborhood. I ordered his retreat 
to be surrounded. I told Nur-Jahan to fire my musket. The 
smell of the tiger made the elephant very restless and he would not 
stand still ; and to take good aim from a howdah is a very difficult 
feat. Mirza Rustam, who, after me, has no equal as a marksman, 
has fired three or four shots from an elephant's back without effect. 
Nur-Jahan, however, killed this tiger with the first shot." 

f Which, beyond a doubt, were assumed. 



Nztr-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 265 

to M ah abet- Khan, and showed him great 
favor, so that he felt quite secure on that 
side. Whatever Nur-Mahal said to the em- 
peror in private, he repeated to the Khan, 
and he bade him beware, for she had a design 
upon him. Mahabet became less watchful. 
Besides, he had lost some of his best soldiers 
in the fight. Nur-Mahal worked against him 
in private and public." She suggested to the 
emperor to order a review of the troops, and 
as she was an over-lord of a district near by, 
she mustered a formidable array of cavalry 
devoted to her cause. 

The review was held, and Mahabet-Khan 
was prevailed upon to absent himself with 
many of his own troops, lest blood should be 
again shed. His weakness induced him to 
accede, and he left the emperor surrounded 
by only a portion of his Rajputs. At the 
review, the cavalry of the empress pressed 
close around this guard and overawed it, and 
once more the emperor was his own master 
— saved by his own crafty dissimulation and 
by the more manly energy of the empress. 
Mahabet-Khan received peremptory orders 



266 The Mogul Emperors 

to march at once against Shah Jahan, and to 
send Asaf-Khan back to court. He hesitated 
to obey the latter order, "which greatly en- 
raged the Begam," who sent him a second 
message which cowed him, and which was 
promptly obeyed. He set off on his journey 
with about two thousand troops, and joined 
his fortunes with Prince Shah Jahan, whom 
he had been sent to destroy. 

It was at this very time that Prince Parwiz 
died in " a heavy sleep." His illness was 
attributed to excessive drinking, but, as Mu- 
hammadans say in doubtful cases, " Allah 
knows if this be true." Poisonings were 
suspected in this reign as freely as in that 
of Louis XIV of France, a century later. 
He was in the custody of his brother Shah 
Jahan. The twenty-second year of the reign 
of Jahangir had now begun. Nur-Mahal was 
all-powerful, but the forces of Shah Jahan 
were increasing. Sultan Shahriyar also be- 
came ill, and was obliged to leave Kashmir, 
where the emperor had gone. The emperor 
himself fell ill, with a return of his old dis- 
ease, the asthma. He refused wine, and 



Nzir-Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 267 

rapidly grew worse, and died October 28, 

1627, at the age of fifty-nine years. 

Shah Jahan was his designated successor, 
but Nur-Mahal cluno: to the vain idea of 
retaining the reins of government which she 
had held so long, and intrigued to cause 
Sultan Shahriyar to rebel. The sons of 
Shah Jahan were still in the female apart- 
ments with Nur-Mahal, but they "were not 
safe with her," and they were accordingly 
removed from her charge. By February, 

1628, all obstacles had been removed, and on 
the 6th of that month Shah Jahan ascended 
the throne after Shahriyar had been captured 
and blinded.* 

" Thus had he (through a sea of blood) 
attained the highest post and dignity of the 

* Shahriyar was the most beautiful of all the princes. Once 
when he was troubled with a severe pain in his eyes, he was cured 
by Mukawab Khan. The emperor heard of his cure and cynically 
remarked, that no doubt his eyes would remain entirely well until 
they were put out by his brothers — as indeed came to pass. To 
insure a safe title to the throne, Shah Jahan felt obliged to do away 
with the sons of his brothers Khosrou, Parwiz, Daniel, and Morad. 
All these were executed and buried at Lahore, and their heads sent 
to Shah Jahan. His reign was not troubled by rival claimants to 
the throne. 



268 The Mogul Emperors 

Eastern world, surrounded with delights and 
guarded by a power, in his conceiving, unre- 
sistable." When Herbert wrote this (in 
1638) the favorite Mumtaz-i-Mahal had been 
dead eight years, and it was rumored he had 
taken her daughter to wife, " incest of so 
high nature that that yeare his whole empire 
was wounded with God's arrowes of plague, 
pestilence, and famine, this thousand yeares 
before never so terrible," 

Nur-Mahal's influence was now completely 
gone, and her name is not again heard of till 
her death in 1645.''* She was treated with 
respect, and received a handsome income — 
ninety-four thousand dollars (two lacs) a year 
as empress-dowager. She wore no color but 
white after the emperor's death, abstained 
from all entertainments, and appeared to 

* At the age of sixty years. Professor Blochmann (p. 510) says 
she died at Lahore in A.H. 1055 at the age of seventy-two. Keene 
{Agra Guide) has the same remark. I believe the date of her birth 
to have been A.D. 1585. Akbar was in the Penjab directing the 
campaigns against Kashmir and the Afghans during 1586 and 
1587. It was at this time, I think, that the father of Nur-Mahal 
was presented to the emperor in the city of Fathpur. {Native 
Historians^ vol. vi., p. 404.) 



Nur- Mahal, Empress of Hindustan 269 

devote her life entirely to the memory of her 
husband. She is buried in a tomb at Lahore, 
near Jahangir. 

It is almost impossible to compare the 
career and talents of an Asiatic and a West- 
ern ruler. The circumstances are utterly 
unlike, and our familiar standards fail. Bad, 
weak, and cruel as Jahangir was, he does not 
seem more despicable than James I. of Eng- 
land, for example, who was his contem- 
porary. His empress was unsuccessful in 
her plans, where no skill or wisdom would 
have prevailed, while Elizabeth of England 
succeeded in her policy. If we think of the 
contemporaries of the Indian empress, we 
shall not find her equal. We are forced to 
go back to the great Elizabeth for a term of 
comparison even. While she lived, Nur- 
Mahal was the greatest personage in all 
Asia, if not in the whole world. 



70 The Mogul Emperors 



CHAPTER VII 

SHAH JAHAN AND AURANGZEB, EMPERORS OF 
HINDUSTAN (a.D. 1628-1658 AND A.D. 
1658-I707) 

The reigns of these two princes are 
recounted in a famous work by Monsieur 
Bernier, a man no less intelligent than Sir 
Thomas Roe. A preface to his volume 
eives some small account of him. " Mon- 
sieur Bernier, after he had benefited himself 
for many years by the converse of the famous 
Gassendi, and had seen him expire in his 
arms, succeeded him in his knowledge, and 
inherited his opinions and discoveries, (then) 
embarked for Egypt, stayed above a whole 
year at Cairo, and took the occasion of some 
Indian vessels to pass to Surat, and abode 
twelve years at the court of the Great 
Mogul. His prudent conduct made him 
merit the esteem of his generous master, 
Fazel-Khan, who since is become the first 



SHAH JAHAN 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 271 

minister of that great empire, to whom he 
taught the principal languages of Europe, 
after he had translated for him the whole 
philosophy of Gassendi from the Latin, and 
whose leave he could not obtain to 0-0 home 

o 

till he had got for him a select number of 
our best European books, thereby to sup- 
ply the loss he should suffer of his person. 
Never a traveller went from home more 
capable to observe, nor hath written with 
more knowledge, candor, and integrity." 

And after this preface the history of 
Bernier begins by reciting his arrival at 
Surat in the year 1655. "I found that he 
who reigned there was called Shah Jahan, 
that is to say, king of the world. He was 
the tenth of those who were descended from 
Tamerlane, which signifieth the lame prince, 
who married his near kinswoman, the only 
daughter of the prince of the nations of 
Great Tartary, called Moguls, who have 
(thus) communicated their name to the 
strangers that now govern Hindustan, the 
country of the Indians, though those that 
are employed in public charges and offices, 



272 The Mogul Emperors 

and even those that are listed In the militia, 
be (from) nations gathered out of all coun- 
tries, most of them Persians, some Arabians, 
and some Turks." 

" I found also at my arrival that this Shah 
Jahan, of above seventy years of age, had 
four sons and two daughters ; that some 
years since he had made these four sons 
vice-kings, or governors of provinces ; that 
it was almost a year that he was fallen into 
a great sickness, whence it was believed he 
would never recover ; which had occasioned 
a great division among these four brothers 
(all laying claim to the empire), and had 
kindled among them a war which lasted 
about five years, and which I design here to 
describe." 

We cannot follow the very Intelligent nar- 
rative of Bernier of the rise of Aurangzeb, 
one of the four sons, to power. This is 
compactly set forth in the original work, 
which is a large book of itself. The intrigue 
is so close and constant that the narrative 
can scarcely bear condensation. It is more 
to my purpose to give in Bernier's own words 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 273 

some of the incidents of which he had per- 
sonal knowledge. He was at this court in 
the quality of a physician under salary from 
one of the great lords who was, he says, " the 
most knowing man in Asia." 

It will be necessary to name the children 
of the king : " The eldest of these four sons 
was called Dara, that is, Darius ; the second 
was called Sultan-Sujah, that is, the valiant 
prince ; the name of the third was Aurang- 
zeb, which signifies the ornament of the 
throne ; that of the fourth was Morad- 
Bakche, as if you should say, desire accom- 
plished. The eldest daughter was called 
Begum-Saheb, that is, the mistress princess; 
and the youngest, Rauchenara-Begum, which 
is as much as bright princess, or the splendor 
of princesses." 

Here is Bernier's penetrating estimate of 
the character of the members of this nest of 
tyrants : " Dara, the eldest son, wanted not 
in good qualities. He was gallant, witty, 
exceeding civil and liberal, but entertained 
so good an opinion of his person that he was 
intolerant of all counsel, so that even those 



2 74 ^'^^ Mogul Emperors 

most affectionate to him were shy of dis- 
covering secret intrigues to him. He was 
extremely passionate in anger and affronted 
even the greatest nobles. Though he was a 
Muhammadan in public, he was, probably, 
a mere heathen in private, and it is certain 
that he encouraged both Hindus and Jesuits. 
This laxness in religion was afterwards 
turned much against his advantage in the 
strupfSfles for the throne." * 

" Sultan-Sujah, the second son, was much 
of the humor of Dara, but he was more close 
and more settled, and had better conduct and 
dexterity." 

" Aurangzeb, the third brother, had not 
that gallantry nor surprising presence of 
Dara ; he appeared more serious and melan- 
choly, and, indeed, was much more judicious, 
understanding the world very well. He was 
reserved, crafty, and exceedingly versed in 
dissembling ; inasmuch that for a long while 

* Dara's adherents were chiefly Hindus, and the prince trans- 
lated the Upanishads from Sanscrit into Persian. Professor Max 
Miiller makes the curious remark that Dara's Persian version was 
the basis of the Latin translation upon which Schopenhauer 
declares that his system is founded. 



Shah Jahan and Atirangzeb 275 

he made profession to be (2,) fakir, renounc- 
ing the world, and feigning not to pretend at 
all to the crown, but to desire to pass his life 
in prayer and other devotions. In the mean- 
time he failed not to make a party at court 
with dexterity, art, and secrecy. He also 
had the skill to maintain himself in the affec- 
tion of Shah Jahan, his father." 

" Morad-Bakche, the youngest of all, was 
the least dextrous and the least judicious. 
He cared for nothing but mirth and pastime, 
to drink, hunt and shoot ; he was very civil 
and liberal, despised cabals, and bragged 
openly that he trusted only in his arm and 
sword." 

" Concerning the two daughters, the eld- 
est, Begum-Saheh was very beautiful and a 
great wit, passionately beloved of her father. 
It was even rumored that he loved her to 
that degree as is hardly to be imagined. He 
had given her charge to watch over his safety 
and to have an eye to all that came to his 
table, and she knew perfectly to manage his 
humor, and to bend him as she pleased. 
She stuck entirely to Dara, and espoused 



276 The Mog^il Emperors 

cordially his part, because he had promised 
her that so soon as he should come to the 
crown he would (find a husband for her) ; 
which is almost never practiced in Indostan" 
(as the royal princesses were so far in rank 
above any subjects). 

Bernier relates one of the adventures of 
this princess, as " they are not amours like 
ours, but attended with events dreadful and 
tragical." It appears that she received one 
of her lovers into her apartments, and that, 
as Shah Jahan was about to enter, she had 
nowhere to conceal him except in one of the 
large hot-water caldrons made to bathe in. 
The emperor feigned to see nothing, but 
after a long visit sternly commanded a fire 
to be built beneath the bath, and did not 
leave till the man was dead. 

" Her sister, Rauchenara-Begum, never 
passed for so handsome and witty as Begum- 
Saheb, but she was not less cheerful, and 
comely enough, and hated pleasures no more 
than her sister ; but she addicted herself 
wholly to Aurangzeb, and consequently de- 
clared herself an enemy to Begum-Saheb and 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 277 

to Dara." Mumtaz-i-Mahal, their mother, 
had been dead for some years, and was buried 
in her glorious tomb, the Taj-Mahal. She 
died in giving birth to the younger sister. 

" So Shah Jahan, finding himself charged 
with these four princes, all come of age, all 
pretending to the crown, enemies to one 
another, and each of them secretly forming 
a party, was perplexed enough as to what 
was fittest for him to do." They were too 
powerful to be imprisoned, and he was con- 
strained to set them over distant parts of the 
empire, though this course gave each of them 
power and an army of his own. 

A trifling incident placed Aurangzeb in 
alliance with Emir-Jemla, wazir of Golconda. 
These two great men were not long together 
till they framed large designs. And, first of 
all, the emperor was presented with "that 
great diamond which is esteemed matchless.* 
Presents and intrigue put the two friends 
into the possession of new powers, and gave 
them new armies ; and every gain to them 
seemed a loss to Dara, who was with his 

* This was the Kohinur. 



278 The Mogul Emperors 

father at court. In the midst of these events 
Shah Jahan fell sick, and it was thought he 
must die. 

Mighty armies were raised by Dara at 
Agra and Delhi ; by Sultan-Sujah in Ben- 
gal ; by Aurangzeb in the Deccan ; by 
Morad-Bakche in Guzarat. Aurangzeb ca- 
joled the latter into joining forces with him, 
and the two set out for Agra to take posses- 
sion of the kingdom should their father be 
dead ; " to kiss his feet should he be alive, 
and to deliver him from the hands of Dara." 
In a letter to Morad, Aurangzeb says, "I 
need not remind you, my brother, how re- 
pugnant to my real disposition are the toils 
of government. While Dara and Sultan- 
Sujah are tormented with a thirst for do- 
minion, I sigh only for the life of 2. fakir." 

" What, then, should Shah Jahan, this un- 
fortunate king, do, who seeth that his sons 
have no regard to his orders ; who is informed 
at all hours that they march apace towards 
Agra at the head of their armies, and who at 
this conjuncture finds himself sick, to boot, 
in the hands of Dara, that is, of a man who 



Shah Jahan and Atirangzeb 279 

breatheth nothing but war ; who prepareth for 
it with all the marks of an enraged resent- 
ment against his brothers? But what could 
he do in this extremity? He is constrained 
to abandon to them his treasures. He is 
forced to send for his old and most trusty- 
captains, whom he knows for the most part 
to be not very affectionate to Dara ; he must 
command them to fio:ht for Dara agfainst his 
own blood, his own children, and those for 
whom he had more esteem than for Dara; 
he is obliged forthwith to send armies against 
them all." 

The first battle was a decided victory for 
Aurangzeb and Morad-Bakche, and they 
were not far from Agra.* Immediately 
all were in arms. An army of one hun- 
dred thousand horse, twenty thousand foot, 
and four thousand cannon was levied for 
the cause of Dara, who forced a great battle 
in which he was hopelessly defeated and 

* In this battle the Jiowdah of Prince Murad's elephant "was 
stuck thick with arrows as a porcupine with quills." It was long 
preserved as a curiosity, " also as a memorial of the bravery of a 
descendant of Timur." 



28o The Mogul Emperors 

obliged to fly in desperate case, while his 
victorious brothers came to the gates of 
Agra, where presently the emperor's guards 
were overpowered and he was subject to their 
wilh " If ever man was astonished, Shah 
Jahan was, seeing that he was fallen into 
the snare which he had prepared for 
others, that himself was imprisoned, and 
Aurangzeb master of the fortress." 

In a short time Morad-Bakche was im- 
prisoned by his wily brother, and soon 
done to death by violence. Sultan-Sujah 
was defeated in a pitched battle as Dara 
had been, and was again. All things fell 
out contrary to both these vanquished and 
unfortunate men. By a strange accident 
Bernier met Dara after his worst defeat, 
and saw him march away with an escort of 
no more than five hundred cavalry, he who 
had led hundreds of thousands. A few days 
later he again saw him in chains, a prisoner, 
borne on an elephant through the streets of 
Delhi. 

"This was none of those brave elephants 
of Ceylon or Pegu, that he was wont to 



Shah Jahan and Atirangzeb 281 

ride on, with gilt harness and embroidered 
covers ; it was an old caitiff animal, very 
dirty and nasty, with an old torn cover 
and a pitiful seat all open to the sun. 
There was no more seen about him that 
necklace of big pearls which those princes 
are wont to wear. All his dress was a 
vest of coarse linen, all dirty, with a tur- 
ban of the same, and a wretched scarf over 
his head like a varlet." 

By the vehement advice of his youngest 
sister, Rauchenara-Begum, he was put to 
death, and his bloody head was brought 
to Aurangzeb, that he might see ; " which, 
when brought, he wiped it with a handker- 
chief, and after he was satisfied it was the 
very head of Dara, he fell a-weeping, say- 
ing, * Ah, unfortunate man ! Take it away 
and bury it. ' " 

The family of Dara was disposed of either 
by death or by imprisonment. Sultan-Sujah 
fled to the sea-shore by the Ganges' mouth, 
and after incredible sufferings perished in 
his flight. Shah Jahan was confined in a vir- 
tual prison until his death. The walls of his 



282 The Mogul Emperors 

apartments were covered with gilding, but 
the monarch ordered them to be smeared 
over with rough mortar as more suited to 
his humbled condition ; and in his last 
days he grew very devout. 

" And thus endeth this war, which the 
lust of reigning had kindled among those 
four brothers, after it had lasted five or 
six years, from 1655 to 1660 or 1661, which 
left Aurangzeb in the peaceable possession 
of this puissant empire." 

" To conclude, I doubt not that most 
of those who shall have read my history, 
will judge the ways taken by Aurangzeb 
for getting the empire very violent and 
horrid. 

" I pretend not to plead for him, but 
desire only that before he be altogether 
condemned, reflection be made on the 
unhappy custom of this state, which, leav- 
ing the possession of the crown undecided, 
exposeth it to the conquest of the strong- 
est. I am persuaded that those who shall 
a little weigh this whole history, will not 
take Aurangzeb for a barbarian, but for a 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 283 

great and rare genius, a great statesman, 
and a great king. " 

At the beginning of his reign Aurangzeb 
received with admirable wisdom his former 
tutor who had come to court expecting great 
advancement. The interview is reported by 
Bernier directly from the recital of one who 
was present. 

" * What is it that you would have of me? 
Can you reasonably desire that I should 
make you one of the chief noblemen of my 
court ? Let me tell you, if you had 
instructed me as you should have done, 
nothing would have been more just. But 
where are those good documents you should 
have given me ? In the first place you have 
taught me that all Europe was nothing but 
I know not what little island, of which the 
greatest king was he of Portugal, and next 
he of Holland, and after him, he of England ; 
and as to the other kings, you have repre- 
sented them to me as our petty rajahs, 
telling me that they tremble at the names 
of the kings of Indostan. Admirable geog- 
raphy ! You should rather have taught me 



284 The Mogul Emperors 

exactly to distinguish all those different 
states of the world and to well understand 
their strength, their way of fighting, their 
customs, religions, governments, and inter- 
ests. I have scarce learned of you the 
names of my grandsires, the famous found- 
ers of this empire. You had a mind to 
teach me the Arabian tongue. I am much 
obliged to you, forsooth, for having made 
me lose so much time upon a language, as 
if the son of a king should think it to be 
an honor to him to be a grammarian ; he 
to whom time is so precious for so many 
weighty things, which he ought betimes to 
learn. . . . Ought you not to have 
instructed me on one point, at least, so essen- 
tial to be known by a king, namely, on the 
reciprocal duties between the sovereign and 
his subjects ? Did you ever instruct me in 
the art of war, how to besiege a town, or 
draw up an army in battle array ? Happy for 
me that I consulted wiser heads than thine 
on these subjects ! Go ! withdraw to thy vil- 
lage. Henceforth let no person know either 
who thou art, or what is become of thee.' 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 285 

" And thus did Aurangzeb resent the pe- 
dantic instructions of his tutor." * 

Bernier's narrative has great merit, and it 
has been given consecutively without inter- 
ruption from other authorities, for several 
reasons. In the first place, it is a recital 
which we can understand, since it is written 
by one of ourselves— an Occidental. He 
was especially qualified as an observer, for 
he was the friend and pupil of the learned 
Gassendi, and fully acquainted with classic 
and Western knowledge. He was the phy- 
sician and friend of the most learned man of 
the court of the Great Mogul, and had special 
opportunities for knowing the events of the 
time. In one instance, at least, he is able to 

* I am tempted to add in a foot-note the instructions given by 
the great Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid to his mentor Al-Asma'i. 

" Never undertake to teach me in public, and do not be too 
anxious to give me advice in private. Make it your custom to wait 
till I ask you, and when I do so, give me a precise answer void of 
all superfluity. When you see that I am departing from the way 
of equity in my decisions, lead me back again with gentleness, and 
without harsh words or reprimands. Instruct me principally in 
such things as are most requisite for my public speeches, and never 
employ obscure or mysterious terms or recondite words." 

There spoke a tyrant who understood human nature in general, 
and his own nature in particular. 



286 The Mogul Emperors 

report a conversation which the emperor 
had in private, from the direct report of his 
master who was present. At least one of 
the emperor's letters which he quotes, he 
actually saw in the original. 

His work was written after his return to 
Europe, when he had no reason to tell any- 
thing but the exact truth. He had nothing 
to fear from the displeasure, and nothing to 
hope from the favor, of the court. This 
cannot be said for the native historians of 
India. They wrote for the eye and ear of 
the monarch, and their narratives usually 
represent the official view of past events. 
In certain cases the native author has not 
published his history during his lifetime, but 
kept it secret, and has spoken freely. His 
family, in this case, suffered in his stead for 
the posthumous publication.* 

On the other hand, the native historians 
had the great advantage of first-hand knowl- 
edge such as a foreigner could but rarely 
possess. 

The extracts which follow have been 

* This was notably the case of Bedauni. (See Chapter IV.) 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 287 

chosen from Sir Henry Elliott's invaluable 
collection, for the purpose of illustrating the 
characters of the rulers and of their times. 
Little attention has been paid to the his- 
torical sequence of events. Knowledge of 
this sort must be sought for in professed 
histories, like those of Elphinstone and Hun- 
ter, Mill and Elliott. 

Shah Jahan. 

A glimpse of Shah Jahan when he was but 
crown-prince is given in the narrative of Sir 
Thomas Roe, who says : " I never saw so 
settled a countenance, nor any man keep so 
constant a gravity, never smiling, nor in face 
showing any respect or difference of men, 
but mingled with extreme pride and con- 
tempt of all." He was then but twenty-five 
years old, cold, haughty, silent, a competent 
soldier, an able administrator. " He was flat- 
tered by some, envied by others, loved by 
none." The inevitable struggles for the suc- 
cession to the throne of his father, Jahangir, 
brought him into sharp conflict with his 



288 The Mogul Emperors 

brothers, his father, and the Empress Nur- 
Mahal. 

The professional historian is condemned 
to the dreary task of following their wars 
and conquests if he wishes to understand the 
course of political events. But these events 
throw little light on the character of the 
personages. Everywhere we find the Hindu 
husbandman living in his village and flying 
at the approach of all comers. If they are 
on a peaceful mission, he must furnish pro- 
vision for their beasts; if they are bent on 
war, his fields are ravaged. Above the 
husbandman we have the soldier, the petty 
chief, the over-lord, the great noble, the 
king — all of them warriors, and all " craving 
for action." Their expeditions were all alike, 
and the history could be prepared before- 
hand on one of two models — either the war 
was successful or not so. The same strata- 
gems appear and reappear. On the death 
of a king, his sons strive for the succession. 
The army of each pretender, at first small, is 
reenforced by those who have much to gain or 
little to lose. The unsuccessful princes fly 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 289 

to Persia, go on the pilgrimage to Mecca, are 
imprisoned for life, are blinded with hot irons, 
according to the degree of the discomfiture 
or the mildness of the king's temper. The 
recital of the details of these events is 
monotonous a dorm-ir debotU; unless, indeed, 
from time to time we can catch some glimpse 
of the real personality of the ruler, and hear 
his very accents or read his very writings. 

The reign of Shah Jahan is even less 
eventful than that of Jahangir in these 
respects. It was peaceful because he left 
none of his rivals alive. It is memorable 
through the surpassing loveliness of the 
public buildings which he caused to be 
erected. 

The Taj-Mahal, "a dream in marble, 
designed by Titans and finished by jewel- 
lers;"* the Pearl Mosque of Agra, "the 

* Bernier says of the Taj that it was raised in honor of Taj- 
Bibi, Mumtaz-i-Mahal, " his wife, that extraordinary and celebrated 
beauty of the Indies, whom he loved so passionately that it is said 
he never enjoyed any other woman while she lived, and that when 
she died he was in danger to die himself." The Taj has been 
described a thousand times, but never with more delicate insight 
than by M. Andre Chevrillon in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
19 



290 The Mogtd Emperors 

purest and loveliest house of prayer in the 
world ; " the great mosque of Delhi ; the 
palace of the same royal city — these noble 
and exquisite constructions will make his 
reign famous forever. The early period of 
cruelty to his enemies and extermination of 
the rival claimants to the throne was suc- 
ceeded by an era of peace, prosperity, and 
magnificence by which alone he is now 
remembered. 

The public buildings absorbed enormous 
sums. The famous "peacock throne" was 
alone valued at above sixty million dollars. * 
One of its rubies was " upwards of three 
fingers' breadths wide {sic) by two in length." 
This was, perhaps, the famous stone, "the 
tribute of the world," given by Shah Abbas 
of Persia to Jahangir. The royal treasuries 
overflowed with jewels and gold and silver. 

vol. civ, page 91 (1891). Mumtaz-i-Mahal has no public history. 
While she lived the king was held captive in the tresses of her 
hair ; she bore him many sons and daughters ; at her death he was 
like to die ; in her memory he raised the chief building of the round 
world : this is all her history, and it is enough. 

* According to Tavernier, a French jeweller, who travelled in 
India. 



Shah Jahan and Atcrangzeb 291 

** In the course of years many valuable 
gems had come into the imperial jewel- 
house, each one of which might serve as 
an eardrop for Venus." These were given 
to the chief goldsmith to make the fa- 
mous throne. Its canopy was literally 
covered with gems and was supported by 
twelve columns set with pearls. On the 
top of the canopy was a peacock with ex- 
tended tail thick set with gems. The 
three steps were incrusted with precious 
stones. This throne remained the wonder 
of India until it was carried away by Nadir- 
Shah, in 1739. -^^ ^s still to be seen in 
Teheran, but its chief jewels have been 
displaced and dispersed. It is even now 
valued at thirteen million dollars."^ 

Tavernier the jeweller has his word to say 
of the Taj-Mahal. "Of all the tombs which 
one sees at Agra, that of the wife of Shah 
Jahan is the most splendid. It is at the east 

* There were six other thrones, Tavernier says, and the native 
historians describe one which was also ornamented with peacocks, 
arranged two and two. See a paper by Dr. Ball, on the engraved 
gems of the Moguls, in Proc. R. Irish Acad., vol. iii., p. 3S0. 



292 The Mogul Emperors 

end of the town, by the side of the river, in 
a great square surrounded by walls. This 
square is a kind of garden divided into com- 
partments like our parterres, but in the 
places where we put gravel there is white 
and black marble. ... I witnessed the 
commencement and accomplishment of this 
great work, on which they have expended 
twenty-two years, during which twenty 
thousand men worked incessantly. . . . 
Shah Jahan began to build his own tomb on 
the other side of the river, but the war which 
he had with his sons interrupted his plan, 
and Aurangzeb, who reigns at present, is not 
disposed to complete it." Tavernier has 
also left an expert's opinion on the crown- 
jewels, which he was permitted to examine 
at leisure. The curious in such matters 
should consult his Travels in India, edited 
by V. Ball. 

- Shah Jahan's entertainments were on a 
magnificent scale. The festival given on 
his accession, together with the presents to 
his officers, cost eight million dollars. His 
gifts to the two sacred cities were on a 



Shah Jahan and Aura7igzeb 293 

corresponding scale. " Among the events 
of this year was the despatch of a candle- 
stick studded with gems to the revered 
tomb of the Prophet (in Medina), on whom 
be the greatest favors and blessings." The 
candlestick was of amber, and weighed 
about eighteen pounds, and it was literally- 
covered with gems, including a monster 
diamond from Golconda, which alone was 
valued at over seventy-five thousand dol- 
lars. '* One of the subject provinces was 
taxed to provide magnificent gifts besides, 
and a special embassy was sent to the 
holy cities under the charge of a descend- 
ant of the Prophet (on whom be the 
peace)." All these and other splendors 
were dispersed when the sacred cities were 
despoiled by the Wahabees. 

This lavish expenditure was the mark of 
a peaceful and prosperous reign. The king 
was not oppressive, and in his later years 
grew to be kind ; the revenue was plenty, 
and the surplus was devoted to immense 
government works. He was certainly very 
popular with his officers, especially in the 



294 "^^^^ Mogtil Emperors 

latter part of his reign. It is to be noted 
that most of the anecdotes of Shah Jahan 
which have come down to us represent the 
king as always worsted in an exchange of 
repartee. 

Rai Bhara Mai says that In Shah Jahan's 
happy times the prosperity of the land was 
greatly increased ; that domains which in 
Akbar's reign yielded but three lacs, now 
yielded ten, and that this was the rule with 
some few exceptions. " Notwithstanding the 
great area of the country, complaints were 
so few that only one day in the week, 
Wednesday, was fixed upon for the admin- 
istration of justice; and it was rarely even 
then that twenty plaintiffs were found." 

The subordinate courts in the country 
districts seem to have been organized with 
full liberty of appeal, so that finally only 
cases of blood feuds and concerning reli- 
gious matters came directly to the king. 

Attrangzeb. 

Bernier has given strong evidence to the 
great qualities of Aurangzeb. The native 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 295 

writers, each in his own way, confirm the 
judgment. I have extracted a few para- 
graphs from the very complete histories of 
this reign, and have given some of the 
emperor's own letters almost in full ; but I 
refer to the succeeding chapter — " The Ruin 
of Aurangzeb" — for a masterly picture of the 
whole career of the puritan emperor, from 
his austere youth to the troubled ending 
of his power. 

The Habits and Manners of the Emperor 
Aurangzeb. 

" Be it known to the readers of this work 
that this humble slave of the Almighty is 
o-oinof to describe in a correct manner the 
excellent character, the worthy habits, and 
the refined morals of this most virtuous 
monarch, according as he has witnessed 
them with his own eyes." 

" The emperor, a great worshipper of 
God by natural propensity, is remarkable 
for his rigid attachment to religion." He 
regularly makes the appointed ablutions, 
prayers, fasts, and vigils. Several pages 



296 The Mogul Emperors 

are devoted to a list of his meritorious 
acts. " In his sacred court no word of 
backbiting or falsehood is allowed ; " which 
must have been a blessing in a country of 
intrigue, and a glaring novelty in courts. 

" Under the dictates of anger or passion 
he never issues orders of death." " Islam is 
everywhere triumphant, and the Hindu tem- 
ples are destroyed." " All the mosques in 
the empire are repaired at the public ex- 
pense." A digest of all the theological 
works in the royal library was ordered to 
be prepared, so that any inquirer might 
satisfy himself on the points of orthodoxy. 
The very essence of the long reign — its 
leit-motiv — was the return from the worship 
of strange gods to Islam. 

"The emperor himself is perfectly ac- 
quainted with the commentaries, traditions, 
and law ; and he learned the Kuran by 
heart after ascending the throne. He even 
made two copies of it with his own hand, 
which he sent to the two holy cities." 

'' So long as nature keeps the garden of 
the world fresh, may the plant of the pros- 



Shah /a hail and Attrangzeb 297 

perity of this preserver of the garden of 
dignity and honor continue fruitful." The 
four daughters of Aurangzeb were all pious. 
One of them knew the Kuran by heart. 
Another was an Arabic and Persian scholar 
in prose and poetry, and learned in the 
Muhammadan law, having been taught 
under the emperor's own eyes. 

It is interestinp' to take note of the effect 
of intermarriages upon the purity of blood of 
the (so-called) Mogul emperors. Babar was 
the sixth in direct descent from Tamerlane, 
and was of pure Turki stock In the male 
line. His mother, however, was a pure 
Mogul, a descendant of Chenglz-Khan. 
Babar was, therefore, partly Turki and 
partly Mogul. One of his wives was 
Maham-Begam, a relation of Sultan Husein 
Mirza of Herat ; and Humayun, the suc- 
cessor of Babar, was her son. There is 
every reason to believe that Humayun's 
mother was pure Turki. Her father was a 
direct descendant of Tamerlane. 

Humayun made a rash marriage of incli- 
nation during the period of his misfortunes 



298 The Mogul Emperors 

and wanderings (a.d. 1541). At his brother, 
Prince Hindal's, camp he married the young 
daughter of Hindal's preceptor, Sheikh AH 
Akbar Jami ; she was not fourteen years of 
age, and far below the emperor in rank, al- 
though she was a descendant of the Prophet, 
and counted at least one saint among her 
ancestors. Her father's family was from 
Khorassan. Her name was Hamida.* 

Akbar the Great was the son of Hamida ; 
and his son Jahangir was born of Akbar's 
marriage with the daughter of a Hindu 
rajah, Bihari Mal.f Shah Jahan, his suc- 
cessor, was the son of Jahangir's first wife, 
the granddaughter of the Rajah Maldeo of 
Jodhpur. 

Shah Jahan's favorite queen and the 
mother of all his sons was Mumtaz-i- Mahal, 
the niece of Nur-Mahal (Jahangir's queen), 
the daughter of Asaf-Khan, the grand- 
daughter of Mirza Ghiyas Beg, a Persian. 
Aurangzeb, the emperor, was the son of 

* Her title was Maryam Makani — dwelling with the Virgin 
Mary. She was not a Christian, 

f Her title was the Maryam uzzamani — Mary of the age, of the 
period. 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 299 

Mumtaz-i-Mahal, and had, therefore, but 
little Turki blood in his veins. The char- 
acters of the male ancestors are well known. 
Of the female we know next to nothing, 
excepting always the famous Empress Nur- 
Mahal. 

In a general way the effect of the Hindu 
strain of blood is not difficult to trace in 
the characters of the successive monarchs as 
we follow the line from the frank, bold, 
generous Babar, through the humaner, and 
though not less adventurous, Akbar, to 
Jahangir, the indolent and self-indulgent 
king, down to Shah Jahan, who was, in his 
youth at least, the very model of a magnifi- 
cent, cold, and aristocratic Hindu. 

The chief characteristics of Aurangzeb's 
reign are to be attributed more to his 
bigoted Muhammadanism than to his tem- 
perament. When we consider that all these 
kings are of the stock of Chengiz-Khan and 
of the Amir Timur, the gradual thinning of 
that savage blood by the richer, more 
luxurious Hindu and Persian streams de- 
serves at least this brief digression. 



300 The Mogul Emperors 

On occasion, Aurangzeb could be as cruel 
as Timur himself. When Sambha and Kab- 
kalas were taken prisoners, and were abusive 
to him while in chains before the throne, he 
ordered their tongues to be cut out, " that 
they might no longer speak disrespectfully." 
" After that their eyes were to be torn out," 
and finally they, with ten others, were put to 
death with a variety of tortures. These 
were Hindus, " infidels " (not Muhamma- 
dans), however. 

Shah Jahan was kept closely in the citadel 
at the end of his reign, and Aurangzeb 
communicated with him only by letters. In 
one of them he states his position with 
apparent humility, and, recounting his vic- 
tories over his brothers, hopes " soon to be 
free of this business." " It is clear to your 
Majesty that Almighty Allah bestows his 
trusts upon one who discharges the duty of 
cherishing his subjects and protecting the 
people. It is manifest and clear to wise men 
that a wolf is not fit for a shepherd, and that 
no poor-spirited man can perform the great 
duty of governing. Sovereignty signifies 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 301 

protection of the people, not self-indulgence 
and libertinism." Thus proudly, though in 
outwardly respectful form, he justifies his 
course to his captive father and king, who 
had been a wolf and not a shepherd. 

His crafty spirit appears in one of his 
letters to Murad Bakhsh, where he says : '' I 
have not the slightest liking for, or wish to 
take any part in, the government of this 
deceitful and unstable world ; my only desire 
is, that I may make the pilgrimage (to 
Mecca). But whatever course you may take 
against our brother (Dara), you may con- 
sider me your sincere friend and ally." 
When Murad was a prisoner in Aurangzeb's 
camp, it was necessary to send him away 
secretly, for fear of a rescue. Four elephants 
were prepared, and were sent under escort in 
four different directions. On one of these 
the captive prince was placed, but his 
partisans could not tell on which one, and 
dared not attack all four. Though Aurang- 
zeb was endowed with every kind of courage, 
physical and moral, he was ever crafty and 
suspicious. It was not in his nature to be 



302 The Mogul Emperors 

frankly bold like Babar ; but as age came on 
he grew kinder and more indulgent to erring 
human nature, though no less distrustful 
of it. 

He journeyed with Wariness, and where he halted 
There Wariness halted herself, his comrade. 

We have a picture of the king in the 
seventy-sixth year of his age, by Gemelli, 
a Neapolitan traveller. It is worth quota- 
tion, though it is but a superficial and trivial 
portrait at the best. The Neapolitan could 
not comprehend a nature like the emperor's. 

'' Soon after, the king came in, leaning on 
a staff forked at the top, abundance of court- 
iers going before him. He had on a white 
vest, a turban of the same white stuff, and 
tied with a gold web, on which an emerald 
of a vast bigness appeared amidst four little 
ones. A silk sash covered the Indian dagger 
hanging at the left. His shoes were after 
the Moorish fashion, and his legs naked, 
without hose. Two servants put away the 
flies with long white horse-tails ; another, at 
the same time, keeping off the sun with a 
green umbrella. The king was of low stature, 



Shah Jahan and A^trangzeb 30 



:i^3 



with a large nose, slender and stooping with 
age (he was now seventy-six years old, as 
has been said). The whiteness of his round 
beard was more visible on his olive-colored 
skin. When he was seated, they gave him 
his cimeter and buckler, which he laid down 
on his left side, within the throne. Then he 
made a sign with his hand for those that had 
business to draw near ; who being come up, 
two secretaries, standing, took their petitions, 
which they delivered to the king, telling him 
their contents. I admired to see him indorse 
them with his own hand, without spectacles, 
and by his cheerful, smiling countenance seem 
pleased with the employment." 

After the audience of the king's sons and 
grandsons and the great officers was over, 
the king retired, and the court returned to 
their tents, led by the provost-marshal, who 
was preceded by a great trumpet of green 
copper eight spans long. " That foolish 
trumpet made me laugh, because it made a 
noise much like that our swine-herds make 
to call together their swine at night." 

In the fiftieth year of the reign, when he 



304 The Mogul Emperors 

was eighty-eight years old, Aurangzeb fell 
seriously ill. His son, Azam-Shah, wrote 
for leave to visit him, urging that the air 
of his station did not agree with his health. 
"This displeased the emperor, who replied 
that he had once written a letter of exactly 
the same effect to his father, Shah Jahan, 
when he was ill, and that he was told in 
answer that every air {hawa) was suitable to 
a man, except the fumes {haw a) of ambition." 
Aurangzeb writes to his two sons not long 
before his death. To his heir he says : 
" Health to thee ! My heart is near thee. 
Old age has arrived ; weakness subdues me. 
I came a stranger into this world, and a 
stranger I depart, knowing nothing of myself, 
what I am, or for what I am destined. The 
instant which has passed in power hath left 
only sorrow behind it. I have not been the 
guardian and protector of the empire. My 
valuable time has been passed vainly. I have 
a dread for my salvation and with what tor- 
ments I may be punished. Though I have 
strong reliance on the mercies of Allah, yet 
regarding my actions fear will not quit me. 



Shah Jahan and Atcrafigzeb 305 

Come, then, what may, I have launched my 
vessel in the waves. Give my last prayer to 
my grandson, whom I cannot see, but the 
desire affects me. The Begam (his daugh- 
ter) appears afBicted ; but Allah is the only 
judge of hearts. The foolish thoughts of 
women produce nothing but disappointment. 
Farewell. Farewell. Farewell." 

To his younger and most beloved son, 
the Prince Kam-Bakhsh, he writes : " My son, 
nearest to my heart. . . . Now I depart a 
stranger, and lament my own insignificance, 
what does it profit me ? I carry with me 
the fruits of my own sins and imperfections. 
Surprising Providence ! I came here alone, 
and alone I depart. ... Be cautious that 
none of the faithful are slain (in the troubles 
which he foresees will arise), or that their 
miseries fall upon my head. The agonies of 
death come fast upon me. The courtiers, 
however deceitful, yet must not be ill-treated. 
It is necessary to gain your ends by gentle- 
ness and art. I am going. . . . What- 
ever good or evil I have done, it was for 
you. . . . No one has seen the departure 



3o6 The Mogul Emperors 

of his own soul, but I see that mine is 
departing." 

To him the moral of his long reign was 
that all is vanity. He, like the Caliph 
Abdulrahman of Spain, might say : " Fifty 
years have I reigned, and in so long a course 
of time I count but fourteen days which have 
not been poisoned by some vexation." 

When the emperor was nearly ninety years 
old, and had reigned fifty years, he departed 
to the mercy of Allah. He left a will ; and 
in a letter he renounced the pomp of a 
magnificent tomb, " Carry this creature of 
dust quickly to the first burial place, and 
consign him to the earth without any use- 
less coffin," he wrote. His funeral expenses 
were paid from money which he had himself 
earned by transcribing the Kuran, and they 
were limited to the smallest possible sum. 
According to the will of the king, his mortal 
remains were to be deposited in a tomb con- 
structed during his lifetime. "A red stone 
three yards in length, two in width, and only 
a few inches in depth, is placed above the 
tomb. On this stone was hollowed out a 



Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb 307 

place for the reception of earth and seeds, 
and odoriferous herbs there diffused their 
fragrance round about." 

One of Auranorzeb's higrh nobles has left us 
an affecting account of the emperor's death. 
" My attachment to his majesty was so great 
that, observing his life to be drawing to a 
close, I did not wish to quit the presence. 
The emperor called me to him and said : 
' Separation now takes place between us, and 
our meeting again is uncertain. Forgive, 
then, whatever wittingly or unwittingly I 
may have done against thee, and pronounce 
the words I forgive, three times, with sincerity 
of heart. As thou hast served me long, I 
also forgive thee whatever knowingly or 
otherwise thou mayst have done against me.' 
Upon hearing these words sobs became like 
a knot In my throat, and I had not power to 
speak. At last, after his majesty had repeat- 
edly pressed me, I made a shift to pronounce 
the words I forgive, three times, interrupted 
by heavy sobs. He shed many tears, re- 
peated the words, and, after blessing me, 
ordered me to retire." 



3o8 The Mogul Emperors 

Khafi-Khan, who knew Aurangzeb well, 
writes of him that " of all the sovereigns of 
the house of Timur, no one has ever been 
so distinguished for devotion, austerity, and 
justice. In courage, long-suffering, and 
sound judgment he was unrivalled. But, 
from reverence to the injunctions of the law, 
he did not make use of punishment ; and 
without punishment the administration of a 
country cannot be maintained." " So every 
plan and project that he formed came 
(finally) to little good." 

He was the last of the Mogul kings who 
can be called great. 









AURANGZEB 



The Ruin of Atirangzeb 309 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE RUIN OF AURANGZEB ; OR THE HISTORY 
OF A REACTION * 

By Sir William Wilson Hunter, LL.D., K.C.S.I., 

C.I.E., ETC. 

When Dr. Johnson wanted a modern ex- 
ample of The Vajiity of Human Wishes, he 
took the career of the Royal Swede. But 
during the same period that witnessed the 
brief glories of Charles the Twelfth in 
Europe, a more appalling tragedy of wrecked 
ambition was being enacted in the East. 
Within a year of Charles's birth in 1681, 
Aurangzeb, the last of the Great Mughals, 
set out with his grand army for Southern 
India. Within a year of Charles's fatal 

* It is necessary to explicitly say in this place that the British 
copyright in this chapter is the property of Sir William Wilson 
Hunter, the author of it, by whose kind permission it is repro- 
duced in this American book ; with the authority, however, to 
circulate it in England and the Colonies. 

Edward S. Holden. 



3IO The Mogul Emperors 

march to Russia In 1708, Aurangzeb's grand 
army lay shattered by a quarter of a century 
of victory and defeat ; Aurangzeb himself 
was dying of old age and a broken heart ; 
while his enemies feasted around his starv- 
ing camp, and prayed heaven for long life 
to a sovereign In whose obstinacy and de- 
spair they placed their firmest hopes. The 
Indian emperor and the Swedish king were 
alike men of severe simplicity of life, of the 
highest personal courage, and of Indomit- 
able will. The memory of both Is stained by 
great crimes. History can never forget that 
Charles broke an ambassador on the wheel, 
and that Aurangzeb Imprisoned his father 
and murdered his brethren. 

But here the analogy ends. As the Indian 
emperor fought and conquered in a wider 
arena, so was his character laid out on 
grander lines, and his catastrophe came on 
a mightier scale. He knew how to turn 
back the torrent of defeat, by commanding 
his elephant's legs to be chained to the 
ground in the thick of the battle, with a 
swift yet deliberate valour which Charles 



7^ he Ruin of Atirangzeb 311 

might have envied. He could spread the 
meshes of a homicidal intrigue, enjoying all 
the time the most lively consolations of reli- 
gion ; and he could pursue a State policy 
with humane repugnance to the necessary 
crimes, yet with an inflexible assent to them, 
which Richelieu would have admired. From 
the meteoric transit of Charles the Twelfth 
history learns little. The sturdy English 
satirist probably put that vainglorious career 
to its highest purpose when he used it * to 
point a moral, or adorn a tale.' From the 
ruin of Aurangzeb the downfall of the Mughal 
Empire dates, and the history of modern 
India begins. 

The house of Timur had brought with it 
to India the adventurous hardihood of the 
steppes, and the unsapped vitality of the 
Tartar tent. Babar, the founder of the In- 
dian Mughal Empire in 1526, was the sixth 
in descent from Timur, and during six more 
generations his own dynasty proved prolific 
of strongly marked types. Each succeeding 
emperor, from father to son, was, for evil or 
for good, a genuine original man. In Babar 



312 The Mogul Emperors 

himself, literally The Lion, the Mughal 
dynasty had produced its epic hero ; in 
Humayun, its knight-errant and royal refu- 
gee ; in Akbar, its consolidator and states- 
man ; in Jahangir, its talented drunkard ; 
and its magnificent palace-builder in Shah 
Jahan. It was now to bring forth in 
Aurangzeb a ruler whom hostile writers 
stigmatise as a cold-hearted usurper, and 
whom Muhammadan historians venerate as 
a saint. 

Aurangzeb was born on the night of the 
4th of November 161 8, and before he reached 
the age of ten, his father, Shah Jahan, had 
succeeded to the throne of his ancestors. 
His mother. The Exalted of the Palace, was 
the last of the great queens who shared and 
directed the fortunes of a Mughal Emperor. 
Married when just out of her teens, she bore 
thirteen children to her husband, and died in 
giving birth to a fourteenth. Her nineteen 
years of wedded life had been splendid but 
sorrowful. Of her children, eight died in 
infancy or childhood. Her bereaved hus- 
band raised to her, in sight of his palace, the 



The Rtiin of Aurangzeb 313 

most beautiful tomb in the world. It crowns 
the lofty bank of the Jumna, a dream in 
marble, with its cupolas floating upwards like 
silver bubbles into the sky. To this day it 
bears her Persian title, The Exalted of the 
Palace ; a title which travellers from many 
far countries have contracted into the Taj 
Mahal. 

She left behind her four sons and two 
daughters. Her eldest surviving child was 
the Princess Imperial, named the Ornament 
of the World ; a masterful but affectionate 
girl of seventeen, and not free from feminine 
frailties. The Princess Imperial succeeded 
to her mother's place in her father's heart. 
During the remaining twenty-seven years 
of his reign, she guided his policy and con- 
trolled his palace ; and during his last eight 
years of dethronement and eclipse, she shared 
his imprisonment. The great rest-house for 
travellers at Delhi was one of her many 
splendid charities. She died with the fame 
of her past beauty still fresh, unmarried, at 
the age of sixty-seven. Her grave lies close 
to a saint's and to a poet's, in that campo 



3T4 The Mogul Emperors 

santo of marble latticework, and exquisite 
carving, and embroidered canopies of silk 
and gold, near the Hall of the Sixty-four 
Pillars, beyond the Delhi walls. But only a 
piece of pure white marble, with a little grass 
piously watered by generations, marks the 
princess' grave. ' Let no rich canopy sur- 
mount my resting place,' w^as her dying in- 
junction, inscribed on the headstone. 'This 
grass is the best covering for the grave of a 
lowly heart, the humble and transitory Orna- 
ment of the World, the disciple of the holy 
Man of Chist, the daughter of the Emperor 
Shah Jahan.' But the magnificent mosque of 
Agra is the public memorial of the lady who 
lies in that modest grass-covered grave. 

The eldest son of The Exalted of the 
Palace, and the heir apparent to the empire, 
was Prince Dara. One year younger than 
the Princess Imperial, he became the object 
of her ardent affection throus^h life. In the 
troubles that were to fall upon the family 
she devoted herself to his cause, Dara 
was an open-handed, high-spirited prince, 
contemptuous of advice, and destitute of 



The Ruin of Azirangzeb 315 

self-control. He had a noble and dio-nified 

o 

bearing, except when he lost his temper. 
At such moments he would burst out into 
a tornado of abuse, insulting and menacing 
the orreatest orenerals and officers of State. 
The rigid observances of Islam, with its per- 
petual round of prayers and its long fasts, 
were distasteful to his nature. And he had 
all the rival religions, Christian, Muham- 
madan, and Hindu to choose from, in the 
Court and the seraglio. Dara leaned to- 
wards Christianity and Hinduism. While 
contemptuously continuing in externals a 
Muhammadan, he concocted for himself an 
easy and elegant faith from the alternate 
teaching of a Brahman philosopher and a 
French Jesuit. He shocked good Mussul- 
mans by keeping an establishment of learned 
Hindus to translate their infidel scriptures 
into Persian. He even wrote a book himself 
to reconcile the conflicting creeds. 

His next brother Shuja was a more dis- 
creet young prince. Conciliatory to the 
nobles, courageous and capable of forming 
well-laid plans, he might also have been able 



3i6 The Mogtil Emperors 

to execute them, but for his love of pleasure. 
In the midst of critical affairs, he would sud- 
denly shut himself up with the ladies of his 
palace, and give days and nights to wine, 
and song, and dance ; no minister of State 
daring to disturb his revels. Like his elder 
brother, he too fell away from the orthodox 
Suni faith of the Indian Muhammadans. 
But Shuja's defection was due to deliberate 
policy. He adopted the Shia heresy of Per- 
sia, with the hope of winning the Persian 
adventurers, then powerful at Court and in 
the army, to his side in the struggle 
which he foresaw must take place for the 
throne. 

Next to him in the family came the princess 
named The Brilliant Lady ; less beautiful and 
less talented than her elder sister, but equally 
ambitious, and fonder of gifts and of display. 
She attached herself to the cause of the third 
brother Aurangzeb, born fourteen months 
after herself. The youngest of the four 
brethren was Prince Murad, six years younger 
than Aurangzeb. Murad grew up a model 
Muhammadan knight ; generous, polite, a 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 317 

despiser of intrigue, and devoted to war and 
the chase. He boasted that he had no 
secrets, and that he looked only to his 
sword to win his way to fortune. But as 
years passed on, his shining qualities were tar- 
nished by an increasing indulgence at the 
table, and the struggle for the throne found 
him, still a brave soldier indeed, but also a 
glutton and a drunkard. 

In the midst of this ambitious and voluptu- 
ous Imperial family, a very different character 
was silently being matured. Aurangzeb, the 
third brother, ardently devoted himself to 
study. In after-life he knew the Kuran by 
heart, and his memory was a storehouse of 
the literature, sacred and profane, of Islam. 
He had himself a facility for verse, and wrote 
a prose style at once easy and dignified, run- 
ning up the complete literary gamut from 
pleasantry to pathos. His Persian Letters 
to his Sons, thrown off in the camp, or on 
the march, or from a sick bed, have charmed 
Indian readers during two centuries, and still 
sell in the Punjab bazaars. His poetic faculty 
he transmitted in a richer vein to his eldest 



3i8 The Mogul Emperors 

daughter, whose verses survive under her 
nom de plume of The Incognita. 

But in the case of Aurangzeb, poetry and 
Hterary graces merely formed the illuminated 
margin of a solid and sombre learning. His 
tutor, a man of the old scholastic philosophy, 
led him deep into the ethical and grammat- 
ical subtleties which still form the too exclu- 
sive basis of an orthodox Muhammadan 
education. His whole nature was filled with 
the stern religion of Islam. Its pure adora- 
tion of one unseen God, its calm pauses for 
personal prayer five times each day, its 
crowded celebrations of public worship, and 
those exaltations of the soul which spring 
from fasting and high-strained meditation, 
formed the realities of existence to the 
youthful Aurangzeb. The outer world in 
which he moved, with its pageants and 
pleasures, was merely an irksome intrusion 
on his inner life. We shall presently see 
him wishing to turn hermit. His eldest 
brother scornfully nicknamed him The Saint. 

To a young Muhammadan prince of this 
devout temper the outer world was at that 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 319 

time full of sadness. The heroic soldiers of 
the Early Empire, and their not less heroic 
wives, had given place to a vicious and 
delicate breed of grandees. The ancestors 
of Aurangzeb, who swooped down on India 
from the North, were ruddy men in boots. 
The courtiers among whom Aurangzeb grew 
up were pale persons in petticoats. Babar, 
the founder of the empire, had swum every 
river which he met with during thirty years 
of campaigning, including the Indus and 
the other great channels of the Punjab, and 
the mighty Ganges herself twice during a ride 
of 160 miles in two days. The luxurious 
lords around the youthful Aurangzeb wore 
skirts made of innumerable folds of the finest 
white muslin, and went to war in palankeens. 
On a royal march, when not on duty with 
the Emperor, they were carried, says an eye- 
witness, * stretched as on a bed, sleeping at 
ease till they reached their next tent, where 
they are sure to find an excellent dinner,' a 
duplicate kitchen being sent on the night 
before. 

A hereditary system of compromise with 



320 The Mogul Emperors 

strange gods had eaten the heart out of the 
State religion. Aurangzeb's great-grand- 
father Akbar, deliberately accepted that sys- 
tem of compromise as the basis of the 
empire. Akbar discerned that all previous 
Muhammadan rulers of India had been 
crushed between two opposite forces ; be- 
tween fresh hordes of Mussulman invaders 
from without, and the dense hostile masses 
of the Hindu population within. He con- 
ceived the design of creating a really national 
empire in India, by enlisting the support of 
the native races. He married, and he com- 
pelled his family to marry, the daughters of 
Hindu princes. He abolished the Infidel 
Tax on the Hindu population. He threw 
open the highest offices in the State, and the 
highest commands in the army, to Hindu 
leaders of men. 

The response made to this policy of con- 
ciliation forms the most instructive episode 
in Indian history. One Hindu general sub- 
dued for Akbar the great provinces of 
Bengal and Orissa ; and organised, as his 
finance minister, the revenue system of the 



The Rtiiii of Aurangzeb 321 

Mughal Empire. Another Hindu general 
governed the Punjab. A third was hurried 
southwards two thousand miles from his 
command in Kabul, to put down a Muham- 
madan rising in districts not far from 
Calcutta. A Brahman bard led an imperial 
division in the field, and was Akbar s dearest 
friend, for whose death the emperor twice 
went into mourning. While Hindu leaders 
thus commanded the armies and shaped the 
policy of the empire, Hindu revenue officers 
formed the backbone of its administration, 
and the Hindu military races supplied the 
flower of its troops. It was on this political 
confederation of interests, Mussulman and 
Hindu, that the Mughal Empire rested, so 
long: as it endured. 

Akbar had not, however, been content 
with a political confederation. He believed 
that if the empire was to last, it must be 
based on a religious coalition of the Indian 
races. He accordingly constructed a State 
religion, catholic enough, as he thought, to 
be acceptable to all his subjects. Such a 
scheme of a universal religion had, during 



322 The Mogul Emperors 

two hundred years, been the dream of Hindu 
reformers and the text of wandering preach- 
ers throughout India. On the death of the 
Bengal saint of the fifteenth century, the 
Muhammadans and Hindus contended for 
his body. The saint suddenly appeared in 
their midst, and, commanding them to look 
under the shroud, vanished. This they did. 
But under the winding sheet they found only 
a heap of beautiful flowers, one-half of which 
the Hindus burned with holy rites, while the 
other half was buried with pomp by the 
Mussulmans. In Akbar's time, many sacred 
places had become common shrines for the 
two faiths : the Mussulmans venerating the 
same impression on the rocks as the foot- 
print of their prophet, which the Hindus 
revered as the footprint of their god. 

Akbar, the great-grandfather of Aurang- 
zeb, utilised this tendency towards religious 
coalition as an instrument of political union. 
He promulgated a State religion, called the 
Divine Faith, which combined the mono- 
theism of Islam with the symbolic worship of 
Hinduism, and with something of the spirit 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 323 

of Christianity. He worshipped the sun as 
the most glorious visible type of the Deity ; 
and he commanded the people to prostrate 
themselves before himself as the Divine 
representative. The Muhammadan lawyers 
set their seal to a decision supporting his 
Majesty. The Muhammadan medical men 
discovered that the eating of beef, which 
Akbar had renounced as repugnant to Hindu 
sentiment, was hurtful to the human body. 
Poets glorified the new faith ; learned men 
translated the Hindu scriptures and the 
Christian gospel ; Roman priests exhibited 
the birth of Jesus in waxwork, and intro- 
duced the doctrine of the Trinity. The 
orthodox Muhammadan beard was shaved ; 
the devout Muhammadan salutation was dis- 
continued ; the Muhammadan confession of 
faith disappeared from the coinage ; the 
Muhammadan calendar gave place to the 
Hindu. At length, a formal declaration of 
apostasy was drawn up, renouncing the 
religion of Islam for the Divine Faith of 
the Emperor. 

The Emperor was technically the elected 



324 The Mogul Emperors 

head of the Muhammadan congregation, and 
God's vicegerent on earth. It was as if the 
Pope had called upon Christendom to re- 
nounce in set terms the religion of Christ. 
A Persian historian declares that when these 
'effective letters of damnation,' as he calls 
them, issued, ' the heavens might have rent 
asunder and the earth opened her abyss.' 
As a matter of fact, Akbar was a fairly suc- 
cessful religious founder. One or two grave 
men retired from his Court, and a local in- 
surrection was easily quelled. But Akbar 
had no apostolic successor. His son, the 
talented drunkard, while he continued to 
exact the prostrations of the people, revived 
the externals of Islam at Court, and restored 
the Muhammadan confession of faith to the 
coin. Akbar's grandson, the palace-builder, 
abolished the prostrations. At the same 
time he cynically lent his countenance to the 
Hindu worship, took toll on its ceremonies, 
and paid a yearly allowance to the Hindu 
high-priest at Benares. 

But neither the son nor the grandson of 
Akbar could stem the tide of immorality 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 325 

which rolled on, with an ever-increasing vol- 
ume, during three generations of contempt- 
uous half-belief. One of Akbar's younger 
sons had drunk himself to death, smuggling 
in his liquor in the barrel of his fowlingpiece, 
when his supply of wine was cut off. The 
quarter of Delhi known as Shaitanpara, or 
Devilsville, dates from Akbar's reign. The 
tide of immorality brought with it the lees 
of superstition. Witches, wizards, diviners, 
professors of palmistry, and miracle-workers 
thronged the capital. ' Here,' says a French 
physician at the Mughal Court, ' they tell a 
poor person his fortune for a halfpenny.* 
A Portuguese outlaw sat as wisely on his bit 
of carpet as the rest, practising astrology by 
means of an old mariner's compass and a 
couple of Romish prayer-books, whose pic- 
tured saints and virgins he used for the signs 
of the zodiac. 

It was on such a world of immorality, 
superstition and unbelief that the austere 
young Aurangzeb looked out with sad eyes. 
His silent reflections on the prosperous 
apostates around him must have been a 



326 The Mogul Emperors 

sombre monotone, perhaps with ominous 
passages in it, Hke that fierce refrain which 
breaks in upon the Easter evening psalm, 
' But in the name of the Lord, I will destroy 
them.' A young prince in this mood was a 
rebuke to the palace, and might become a 
danger to the throne. No one could doubt 
his courage ; indeed he had slain a lion set 
free from the intervening nets usually em^- 
ployed in the royal chase. At the age of 
seventeen, his father accordingly sent him to 
govern Southern India, where the Hindu 
Marathas and two independent Muhamma- 
dan kingdoms professing the Shia heresy, 
might afford ample scope for his piety and 
valour. 

The imperial army of the south, under his 
auspices, took many forts, and for a time 
effected a settlement of the country. But 
after eight years of viceregal splendour, 
Aurangzeb, at the age of twenty-five, re- 
solved to quit the world, and to pass the rest 
of his life in seclusion and prayer. His 
father angrily put a stop to this project ; 
recalled him to Court, stripped him of 



The Ruin of Aurangzeh 327 

his military rank, and deprived him of his 
personal estate. But next year it was found 
expedient to employ Aurangzeb in the gov- 
ernment of another province ; and two 
years later he received the great military com- 
mand of Balkh. On his arrival, the enemy 
swarmed like locusts upon his camp. The 
attempt to beat them off lasted till the hour of 
evening prayer ; when Aurangzeb calmly dis- 
mounted from his horse, kneeled down in the 
midst of the battle, and repeated the sacred 
ritual. The opposing general, awed by the 
religious confidence of the prince, called off 
his troops, saying ' that to fight with such a 
man is to destroy oneself.' After about 
seven years of wars and sieges in Afghanis- 
tan, Aurangzeb was again appointed Viceroy 
of Southern India. 

In 1657, his eldest brother, firmly planted 
in the Imperial Court, and watching with 
impatient eyes the failing health of the 
Emperor, determined to disarm his brethren. 
He procured orders to recall his youngest 
brother Murad from his viceroyalty on the 
western coast ; and to strip Aurangzeb of his 



328 The Mogul Emperors 

power in the south. These mandates found 
Aurangzeb besieging one of the two hereti- 
cal Muhammadan capitals of Southern India. 
Several of the gre^t nobles at once deserted 
him. He patched up a truce with the be- 
leaguered city, and extorted a large sum of 
money from its boy-king. He had pre- 
viously squeezed a great treasure from the 
other independent Muhammadan kingdom of 
the south. Thus armed, at the cost of the 
Shia heretics, with the sinews of war, he 
marched north to deliver his father, the 
Emperor, from the evil counsels of the 
Prince Imperial. 

For the Emperor, now sixty-seven years of 
age, lay stricken with a terrible disease. 
The poor old palace-builder well knew the 
two essential conditions for retaining the 
Mughal throne — namely, to be perfectly piti- 
less to his kindred, and to be in perfect 
health himself. In the early days of the 
Empire, the royal family had been knit to- 
gether in bands of warm affection ; and its 
chivalrous founder had given his own life for 
his son's. Babar, runs the story, seeing his 



The Rtiin of Aurangzeb 329 

son sinkine under a mortal disease, walked 
three times solemnly round the bed, and im- 
plored God to take his own life and spare 
the prince. After a few moments of silent 
prayer, he suddenly exclaimed, ' I have borne 
it away ; I have borne it away ! ' and from 
that moment his son began to recover, 
while the Lion Babar visibly declined. But 
during three generations, the Mughal dyn- 
asty had lain under the curse of bad sons. 
Aurangzeb's father, the stricken Emperor, 
had been a rebel prince. He left not one 
male alive of the house of Timur, so that he 
and his children might be the sole heirs of 
the Empire. These children were now to 
prove his perdition. Amid the pangs of his 
excruciating disease, his eldest son Dara 
grasped the central government ; while the 
next son. Prince Shuja, hurried north from 
his Viceroyalty of Bengal to seize the im- 
perial capital. 

Prince Shuja was driven back. But there 
was a son advancing from the south whose 
steps could not be stayed. Aurangzeb had 
been forced by his eldest brother's intrigues 



330 The Mogul Emperors 

to assume the defensive. It seems doubtful 
whether, at first, he aspired to the throne. 
His sole desire, he declared, was to rescue 
his father from evil counsellors, and then to 
retire from the world. This longing for the 
religious life had led to his public degradation 
when a young prince : it asserted itself amid 
the splendours of his subsequent reign. At 
the present crisis it served him for a mask : 
as to whether it was genuine, his previous 
and later life perhaps entitle him to the 
benefit of a doubt. On one point he had 
firmly made up his mind : that the apostasy 
of his two elder brothers disqualified them 
for a Muhammadan throne. He accordingly 
resolved to join his youngest brother, whose 
viceroyalty lay on his way north ; and who, 
although a drunkard in private life, was 
orthodox in his public belief. 

A five years' war of succession followed. 
Each one of the four brethren knew that the 
stake for which he played was an empire or 
a grave. The eldest brother, Dara, defeated 
by Aurangzeb and betrayed into his hands, 
was condemned by the doctors of the law for 



The Rtnn of Aurangzeb 331 

his apostasy to Islam, and put to death as a 
renegade. The second brother, Shuja, was 
hunted out of his viceroyalty of Bengal into 
the swamps of Arakan, and outraged by the 
barbarian king with whom he had sought 
shelter. The last authentic glimpse we get 
of him is flying across a mountain into the 
woods, wounded on the head with a stone, 
and with only one faithful woman and three 
followers to share his end. The destiny of 
the youngest brother, Murad, with whom 
Aurangzeb had joined his forces, for some 
time hung in the balance. The tenderness 
with which Aurangzeb, on a memorable occa- 
sion, wiped the sweat and dust from his 
brother's face, was probably not altogether 
assumed. But the more Aurangzeb saw of 
the private habits of the young prince, the 
less worthy he seemed of the throne. At 
last, one night, Murad awoke from a drunken 
sleep to find himself Aurangzeb's prisoner. 
His friends planned his escape ; and he would 
have safely let himself down from the fort- 
ress, but for an alarm caused by the weeping 
of a lady who had shared his confinement 



332 The Mogul Emperors 

and from whom he could not part without 
saying farewell. He was not allowed another 
chance. Aurangzeb had him tried — nomi- 
nally for an old murder which he had com- 
mitted when Viceroy — and executed. Having 
thus disposed of his three brothers, Aurang- 
zeb got rid of their sons by slow poisoning 
with laudanum, and shut up his aged father 
in his palace till he died. 

Then was let loose on India that tremen- 
dously destructive force, a puritan Muham- 
madan monarch. In 1658, in the same sum- 
mer that witnessed the death of the puritan 
Protector of England, Aurangzeb, at the age 
of forty, seated himself on the throne of the 
Mughals. The narrative of his long reign of 
half a century is the history of a great reaction 
against the religious compromises of his pre- 
decessors, and against their policy of concilia- 
tion towards the native races. He set before 
himself three tasks : he resolved to reform 
the morals of the Court ; to bring down the 
Hindus to their proper place as infidels ; and 
to crush the two heretical Muhammadan 
kingdoms of southern India. 



The Ricin of Aurangzeh 333 

The luxurious lords soon found that they 
had got a very different master from the old 
palace-builder. Aurangzeb was an austere 
compound of the emperor, the soldier, and 
the saint ; and he imposed a like austerity 
on all around him. Of a humble silent 
demeanour, with a profound resignation to 
God's will in the height of success as in the 
depths of disaster, very plainly clothed, never 
sitting on a raised seat in private, nor using 
any vessel of silver or gold, he earned his daily 
food by manual labour. But he doubled the 
royal charities, and established free eating- 
houses for the sick and poor. Twice each 
day he took his seat in court to dispense jus- 
tice. On Fridays he conducted the prayers 
of the common people in the great mosque. 
During the month of fast, he spent six to nine 
hours a night in reading the Kuran to a select 
assembly of the faithful. He completed, 
when emperor, the task which he had begun 
as a boy, of learning the sacred book by 
heart ; and he presented two copies of it 
to Mecca, beautifully written with his own 
hand. He maintained a body of learned 



334 ^-^^ Mogtd Emperors 

men to compile a code of the Muhammadan 
law, at a cost exceeding 20,000/. sterling. 

The players and minstrels were silenced by 
royal proclamation. But they were settled 
on grants of land, if they would turn to a 
better life. The courtiers suddenly became 
men of prayer ; the ladies of the seraglio 
took enthusiastically to reciting the Kuran. 
Only the poor dancers and singers made a 
struggle. They carried a bier with wailing 
under the window of the Emperor. On his 
Majesty's looking out and asking the purport 
of the funeral procession, they answered, that 
" Music was dead, and that they were bear- 
ing forth her corpse." " Pray bury her deeply," 
replied the Emperor from the balcony, " so 
that henceforth she may make no more 
noise." 

The measures taken against the Hindus 
seemed for a time to promise equal success. 
Aurangzeb at once stopped the allowance 
to the Hindu high-priest at Benares. Some 
of the most sacred Hindu temples he lev- 
elled, with the ground, erecting magnificent 
mosques out of their materials on the same 



The Rum of Aurangzeb 335 

sites. He personally took part in the work 
of proselytism. ' His Majesty,' says a Per- 
sian biographer, ' himself teaches the holy 
confession to numerous infidels, and invests 
them with dresses of honour and other 
favours.' He finally restored the Muhamma- 
dan Calendar. He refused to receive offer- 
ings at the Hindu festivals, and he sacrificed 
a large revenue from Hindu shrines. He 
remitted eighty taxes on trade and religion, 
at a yearly loss of several millions sterling. 
The goods of the true believers, indeed, 
were for some time altogether exempted 
from duties ; and were eventually charged 
only one-half the rate paid by the Hindus. 

These remissions of revenue compelled 
Aurangzeb to resort to new taxation. When 
his ministers remonstrated against giving up 
the Hindu pilgrim-tax, he sternly declined to 
share the profits of idolatry, and proposed a 
general tax on the infidels instead. That 
hated impost had been abolished by Akbar 
in the previous century — as part of his 
policy of conciliation towards the Hindus. 
Aurangzeb revived the poll-tax on infidels, 



336 The Mogul Emperors 

in spite of the clamours of the Hindu popu- 
lation. They rent the air with lamentations 
under the palace windows. When he went 
forth in state on Friday, to lead the prayers 
of the faithful in the great mosque, he found 
the streets choked with petitioners. The 
Emperor paused for a moment for the sup- 
pliant crowd to open ; then he commanded 
his elephants to advance, trampling the 
wretched people under foot. The detested 
impost was unsparingly enforced. If a 
Hindu of rank, writes a Persian historian, 
met a menial of the tax-office, 'his counte- 
nance instantly changed.' So low were the 
native races brought, that a proclamation 
issued forbidding any Hindu to ride in a 
palankeen, or on an Arab horse, without 
a licence from Government. 

While Aurangzeb dealt thus hardly with 
the Hindu population, his hand fell heavily 
on the Hindu princes. He vindictively re- 
membered that the Hindu Rajputs had 
nearly won the throne for his eldest brother, 
and that their most distinguished chief had 
dared to remonstrate with himself. ' If your 



The Ruin of Aurangzeh 337 

Majesty,' wrote the brave Hindu Raja of 
Jodhpur, ' places any faith in books by dis- 
tinction called divine, you will there be 
instructed that God is the God of all man- 
kind, not the God of the Mussulmans alone. 
In your temples to His name, the voice of 
prayer is raised ; in a house of images, where 
a bell is shaken. He is still the object of 
worship.' Aurangzeb did not venture to 
quarrel with this great military prince. He 
sought his friendship, and employed him in 
the highest and most dangerous posts. But 
on his death, the Emperor tried to seize his 
infant sons. The chivalrous blood of the 
Rajputs boiled over at this outrage on the 
widow and the orphan. They rose in rebel- 
lion ; one of Aurangzeb's own sons placed 
himself at their head, proclaimed himself 
emperor, and marched against his father with 
70,000 men. A bitter war of religion fol- 
lowed. Aurangzeb, whose cause for a time 
had seemed hopeless, spared not the Hindus. 
He burned their homesteads, cut down their 
fruit-trees, defiled their temples, and carried 
away cartloads of their gods to the capital. 



338 The Mogul Emperors 

There he thrust the helpless images, with 
their faces downwards, below the steps of the 
great mosque, so that they should be hourly 
trampled under foot by the faithful. The 
Rajputs, on their side, despoiled the mosques, 
burned the Kuran, and insulted the prayer- 
readers. The war ended in a sullen submis- 
sion of the Hindus ; but the Rajputs became 
thenceforth the destroyers, instead of the 
supporters, of the Mughal Empire. 

Having thus brought low the infidel 
Hindus of the north, Aurangzeb turned his 
strength against the two heretical Muham- 
madan kingdoms of southern India. The 
conquest of the south had been the dream 
of the Mughal dynasty. During four genera- 
tions, each emperor had laboured, with more 
or less constancy, at the task. To the aus- 
tere conscience of Aurangzeb it seemed not 
only an unalterable part of the imperial 
policy, but an imperative religious duty. It 
grew into the fixed idea of his life. The 
best years of his young manhood, from sev- 
enteen to forty, he had spent as Viceroy of 
the South, against the heretic Shia kingdoms 



The Ruin of Awangzeb 339 

and the infidel Marathas. When the Vice- 
roy of the South became Emperor of India, 
he placed a son in charge of the war. Dur- 
ing the first twenty-three years of his reign, 
Aurangzeb directed the operations from his 
distant northern capital. But at the age of 
sixty-three he realised that, if he was ever to 
conquer the South, he must lead his armies 
in person. Accordingly, in 1681, he set 
forth, now a white-bearded man, from his 
capital, never to return. The remaining 
twenty-six years of his life he spent on the 
march, or in the camp, until death released 
him, at the age of nearly ninety, from his 
long labour. 

Already a great sense of isolation had 
chilled the Emperor's heart. ' The art of 
reigning,' he said, ' is so delicate, that a 
king's jealousy should be awakened by his 
very shadow.' His brothers and nephews 
had been slain, as a necessary condition of 
his accession to the throne. His own sons 
were now impatient of his long reign. One 
of them had openly rebelled ; the conduct of 
another was so doubtful that the imperial 



340 The Mogul Emperors 

guns had to be pointed against his division 
during a battle. The able Persian adven- 
turers, who had formed the most trustworthy 
servants of the Empire, were discounte- 
nanced by Aurangzeb as Shia heretics. The 
Hindus had been alienated as infidels. But 
one mighty force still remained at his com- 
mand. Never had the troops of the Empire 
been more regularly paid or better equipped, 
although at one time better disciplined. 
Aurangzeb knew that the army alone stood 
between him and the disloyalty of his sons, 
between him and the hatred of the native 
races. He now resolved to hurl its whole 
weight against the two heretical Muhamma- 
dan kingdoms of southern India. 

The military array of the Empire con- 
sisted of a regular army of about 400,000 
men, and a provincial militia estimated as 
high as 4,400,000. The militia was made 
up of irregular levies, uncertain in number, 
incapable of concentration, and whose ser- 
vices could only be relied on for a short 
period. The regular army consisted partly 
of contingents, whose commanders received 



The Rm7i of Aurangzeb 341 

grants of territory, or magnificent allowances 
for their support, partly of troops paid direct 
from the imperial treasury. The policy of 
Akbar had been to recruit from three mutu- 
ally hostile classes — the Suni Muhammadans 
of the Empire, the Shia Muhammadans from 
beyond the north-western frontier, and the 
Hindu Rajputs. The Shia generals were 
conspicuous for their skill, the Rajput troops 
for their valour. On the eve of battle the 
Rajput warriors bade each other a cheerful 
farewell for ever ; not without reason, as in 
one of Aurangzeb's actions only six hundred 
Rajputs survived out of eight thousand. 

The strength of the army lay in its cav- 
alry, 200,000 strong. The pay was high, a 
trooper with only one horse, says Bernier, 
receiving not less than Rs. 25 (say 55 shil- 
lings) a month — a large sum in those days. 
Cavaliers with parties of four or more horses 
drew from 200/. to nearly 1,000/. sterling a 
year, while a commander of five thousand 
had an annual surplus of 15,000/. sterling, 
after defraying all expenses. The sons of 
the nobility often served as private troopers, 



342 The Mogul Emperors 

and the path of promotion lay open to all. 
Originally a commander of cavalry was 
bound to maintain an equal number of 
infantry, one-fourth of them to be match- 
lockmen and the rest archers. But, as a 
matter of fact, the infantry were a despised 
force, consisting of 15,000 picked men 
around the king's person, and a rabble of 
200,000 to 300,000 foot soldiers and camp- 
followers on the march. The matchlock- 
men squatted on the ground, resting their 
pieces on a wooden fork which they carried 
on their backs ; ' terribly afraid,' says 
Bernier, 'of burning their eyelashes or 
long beards ; and, above all, lest some jin 
or evil spirit should cause the musket to 
burst.' For every random shot which they 
fired under these disadvantages, the cavalry 
discharged three arrows with a good aim, at 
their ease. The pay of a matchlockman 
went as high as 445-. a month. 

The artillery consisted of a siege-train, 
throwing balls up to 96 and 112 pounds; 
a strong force of field-guns ; 200 to 300 
swivel guns on camels ; and ornamental 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 343 

batteries of light guns, known as the stirrup- 
artillery. The stirrup-artillery on a royal 
march numbered 50 or 60 small brass pieces, 
mounted on painted carriages, each drawn 
by two horses, with a third horse led by an 
assistant driver as a relay. At one time 
many of the gunners had been Christians 
or Portuguese, drawing 22/. sterling per 
mensem. The monthly pay of a native 
artilleryman under Aurangzeb was about 
70^-. The importance of the artillery may 
be estimated from the fact, that after a 
battle with one of his brothers, Aurangzeb 
found 114 cannon left on the field. The 
army of Kandahar in 165 1 carried with it 
30,000 cannon-balls, 400,000 lbs. of gun- 
powder, and 14,000 rockets. The war ele- 
phants were even more important than the 
artillery. Experienced generals reckoned 
one good elephant equal to a regiment of 
500 cavalry ; or, if properly supported by 
matchlockmen, at double that number. Ele- 
phants cost from io,ooo/. downwards : 500/. 
to 1,000/. being a common price. Akbar 
kept 5,000 of these huge animals, * in 



344 ^-^^ Mogtcl Emperors 

strength like a mountain, in courage and 
ferocity lions.' Under Aurangzeb, over 
800 elephants were maintained in the royal 
stables, besides the large number employed 
on service and in the provinces. 

A pitched battle commenced with a 
mutual cannonade. The guns were placed 
in front, sometimes linked together with 
chains of iron. Behind them were ranged 
the camel-artillery with swivel-guns, sup- 
ported by the matchlockmen ; the elephants 
were kept as much as possible out of the 
first fire ; the cavalry poured in their arrows 
from either flank. The Emperor, on a lofty 
armour-plated elephant, towered conspicuous 
in the centre ; princes of the blood or power- 
ful chiefs commanded the right and left 
wings. But there was no proper staff to 
enable the Emperor to keep touch with the 
wings and the rear. After the cannonade 
had done its work of confusion, a tremen- 
dous cavalry charge took place ; the horse 
and elephants being pushed on in front and 
from either flank to break the adverse line 
of pfuns. In the hand-to-hand onset that 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 345 

followed, the centre division and each wingf 
fought on its own account ; and the com- 
mander-in-chief miorht consider himself fortu- 
nate if one of his wings did not go over to 
the enemy. If the Emperor descended from 
his elephant, even to pursue the beaten foe 
on horseback, his own troops might in a 
moment break away in panic, and the just 
won victory be turned into a defeat. 

With all its disadvantages, the weight of 
this array was such that no power then in 
India could, in the long run, withstand. Its 
weak point was not its order of battle, but 
the disorder of its march. There was no 
complete chain of subordination between the 
divisional commanders. A locust multitude 
of followers ate up the country for leagues 
on either side. The camp formed an im- 
mense city sometimes five miles in length, 
sometimes seven and a half miles in circum- 
ference. Dead beasts of burden poisoned the 
air. ' I could never,' writes Bernier, in words 
which his countryman Dupleix turned into 
action a century later, ' see these soldiers, 
destitute of order, and moving with the 



34^ The Mogul Emperors 

irregularity of a herd of animals, without 
thinking how easily five and twenty thou- 
sand of our veterans from Flanders, under 
Conde or Turenne, would destroy an Indian 
army, however vast' 

A Bundela officer in the grand army has 
left a journal of its operations, but without 
mentioning the total number of troops 
employed. Aurangzeb found two distinct 
powers in southern India : first, the heretical 
Muhammadan kingdoms of Golconda and 
Bijapur ; second, the fighting Hindu peas- 
antry, known as the Marathas. In the 
previous century, while Akbar was con- 
ciliating the Hindu Rajputs of the north, 
the independent Muhammadan sovereigns 
of the south had tried a like policy toward 
the Hindu Marathas, with less success. 
During a hundred years, the Marathas had 
sometimes sided with the independent 
Muhammadan kingdoms against the im- 
perial troops, sometimes with the imperial 
troops against the independent Muhamma- 
dan kingdoms ; exacting payment from both 
sides ; and gradually erecting themselves 



The Ruin of Atirangzeb 347 

into a third party which held the balance 
of power in the south. After several 
years of fighting, Aurangzeb subdued the 
two Muhammadan kingdoms, and set him- 
self to finally crush the Hindu Marathas. 
In 1690 their leader was captured ; but he 
scornfully rejected the Emperor's offer of 
pardon coupled with the condition of turning 
Mussalman. His eyes were burned in their 
sockets with a red-hot iron, and the tongue 
which had blasphemed the Prophet was cut 
out. The skin of his head, stuffed with 
straw, was insultingly exposed throughout 
the cities of southern India. 

These and similar atrocities nerved with 
an inextinofuishable hatred the whole Mara- 
tha race. The oruerilla war of extermination 
which followed during the next seventeen 
years has scarcely a parallel in history. The 
Marathas first decoyed, then baffled, and 
finally slaughtered the imperial troops. The 
chivalrous Rajputs of the north had stood 
up against the shock of the grand army and 
had been broken by it. The Hindu peasant 
confederacy of the south employed a very 



348 The Mogul Emperors 

different strategy. They had no idea of 
bidding farewell to each other on the eve 
of a battle, or of dying next day on a pitched 
field. They declined altogether to fight 
unless they were sure to win ; and their 
word for victory meant ' to plunder the 
enemy.' Their clouds of horsemen, scantily 
clad, with only a folded blanket for a saddle, 
rode jeeringly round the imperial cavalry 
swathed in sword-proof wadding, or fainting 
under chain-armour, and with difficulty spur- 
ring their heavily caparisoned steeds out of 
a prancing amble. If the imperial cavalry 
charged in force, they charged into thin air. 
If they pursued in detachments, they were 
speared man by man. 

In the Mughal army the foot-soldier was 
an object of contempt. The Maratha in- 
fantry were among the finest light troops in 
the world. Skilled marksmen, and so agile 
as almost always to be able to choose their 
own ground, they laughed at the heavy 
cavalry of the Empire. The Marathas 
camped at pleasure around the grand army, 
cutting off supplies, dashing in upon its line 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 349 

of march, plundering the ammunition-wag- 
gons at river-crossings, and allowing the 
wearied imperialists no sleep by night- 
attacks. If they did not pillage enough food 
from the royal convoys, every homestead 
was ready to furnish the millet and onions 
which was all they required. When encum- 
bered with booty, or fatigued with fighting, 
they vanished into their hill forts ; and 
next morning fresh swarms hung upon the 
imperial line of march. The tropical heats 
and rains added to the miseries of the 
northern troops. One autumn a river over- 
flowed the royal camp at midnight, sweeping 
away ten thousand men, with countless tents, 
horses, and bullocks. The destruction only 
ceased when the aged Emperor wrote a 
prayer on paper with his own hand, and cast 
it into the rising waters. 

During ten years Aurangzeb directed 
these disastrous operations, chiefly from a 
headquarters' cantonment. But his head- 
quarters had grown into an enormous assem- 
blage, estimated by an Italian traveller at 
over a million persons. The Marathas were 



350 T^^^ Mogul Emperors 

now plundering the imperial provinces to the 
north, and had blocked the line of commu- 
nication with upper India. In 1698 the 
Emperor, lean, and stooping under the 
burden of eighty years, broke up his head- 
quarters, and divided the remnants of his 
forces into two corps d'armee. One of them 
he sent under his best general to hold the 
Marathas in check in the open country. 
The other he led in person to besiege their 
cities and hill forts. The corps d'armee of 
the plains was beguiled into a fruitless chase 
from province to province ; fighting nineteen 
battles in six months. It marched and 
counter-marched, writes the Bundela officer, 
3,000 miles in one continuous campaign, 
until the elephants, horses, and camels were 
utterly worn out. 

The Emperor's corps d''ar'mee fared even 
worse. Forty years before, in the struggle 
for the throne, he had shared the bread of 
the common soldiers, slept on the bare 
ground, or reconnoitred, almost unattended, 
several leagues in front. The youthful 
spirit flamed up afresh in the aged monarch. 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 351 

He marched his troops in the height of the 
rainy season. Many of the nobles, having 
lost their horses, had to trudge through the 
mire on foot. Fort after fort fell before his 
despairing onslaught ; but each capture left 
his army more shattered and the forces of 
the enemy unimpaired. At last his so-called 
sieees dwindled into an attack on a fortified 
village of banditti, during which he was 
hemmed in within his own entrenchments. In 
1703 the Marathas had surprised an imperial 
division on the banks of the Narbada, 21,000 
strong, and massacred or driven it pell-mell 
into the river, before the troopers could even 
saddle their horses. In 1705 the imperial 
elephants were carried off from their pasture- 
ground outside the royal camp ; the convoys 
from the north were intercepted ; and grain 
rose to fivepence a pound in the army — a 
rate more than ten times the ordinary price, 
and scarcely reached even in the severest 
Indian famines when millions have died of 
starvation. The Marathas had before this 
begun to recover their forts. The Emperor 
collected the wreck of his army, and tried to 



352 The Mogul Emperors 

negotiate a truce. But the Insolent exulta- 
tion of the enemy left him no hope. ' They 
plundered at pleasure,' says the Bundela 
officer, ' every province of the south ; ' * not 
a single person durst venture out of the 
camp.' 

In 1706, a quarter of a century since the 
grand army had set forth from the northern 
capital, the Emperor began to sink under the 
accumulation of disasters. While he was shut 
up within his camp In the far south, the 
Marathas had organised a regular system of 
extorting one-fourth of the imperial revenue 
from several of the provinces to the north. 
In the northwest the Hindu Rajputs were in 
arms. Still further north, the warlike Jat 
Hindu peasantry were up In revolt, near the 
capital. Aurangzeb had no one to quell this 
general rising of the Hindu races. The Mu- 
hammadan generals, who had served him so 
well during his prime of life, now perceived 
that the end was near, and began to shift for 
themselves. Of his four surviving sons, he had 
Imprisoned the eldest during six years ; and 
finally released him only after eleven years 



The Ruin of Atcrmtgzeb 353 

of restraint. The next and most favoured 
son so little trusted his father that, after one 
narrow escape, he never received a letter 
from the Emperor without turning pale. The 
third son had been during eighteen years a 
fugitive in Persia from his father's vengeance, 
wearying the Shah for an army with which 
to invade Hindustan. The fourth son had 
known what it was to be arrested on suspicion. 
The finances had sunk into such confusion 
that the Emperor did not dare to discuss 
them with his ministers. With one last 
effort, he retreated to Ahmadnagar ; the 
Marathas insulting the line of march, but 
standing aside to allow the litter of the 
Emperor to pass, in an awed silence. 

The only escape left to the worn-out Em- 
peror was to die. ' I came a stranger into 
the world,' he wrote to one of his sons a 
few days before the end, ' and a stranger 
I depart. I brought nothing with me, and, 
save my human infirmities, I carry nothing 
away. I have fears for my salvation, and of 
what torments may await me. Although I 

trust in God's mercy, yet terror will not quit 

23 



354 ^-^^ Mogul Empcj^ors 

me. But, come what may, I have launched 
my barque on the waves. Farewell, farewell, 
farewell ! ' The fingers of the dying mon- 
arch kept mechanically telling his beads till 
the last moment. He expired on the 21st 
of February, 1707, in the 91st year of his 
age and the 51st of his reign according to 
the Muhammadan calendar ; or two years 
less by our reckoning of time. ' Carry this 
creature of dust to the nearest burying-place,' 
he said, ' and lay it in the earth without any 
useless coffin.' His will restricted his funeral 
expenses to ten shillings, which he saved from 
the sale of work done with his own hands. 
Ninety odd pounds that he had earned by 
copying the Kuran, he left to the poor. His 
followers buried him beside the tomb of a 
famous saint, near the deserted capital of 
Daulatabad. 

Never since the Assyrian summer night 
when the Roman Emperor Julian lay dying 
of the javelin wound in his side, had an im- 
perial policy of reaction ended in so complete 
a catastrophe. The Roman Empire was des- 
tined to centuries of further suffering before 



The Ruin of Aurangzeb 355 

it passed through death into new forms of life. 
The history of Aurangzeb's successors is a 
swifter record of ruin. The Hindu miUtary 
races closed in upon the Mughal Empire ; its 
Muhammadan viceroys carved out for them- 
selves independent kingdoms from its dis- 
membered provinces. A series of puppet 
monarchs were set up and pulled down ; seven 
devastating hosts poured into India through 
the northern passes ; a new set of invaders 
who would take no denial landed from the 
sea. Less than a century after Aurangzeb's 
death, Lord Lake^ on his entry into Delhi, 
was shown a feeble old captive of the Hindu 
Marathas, blinded, poverty-stricken, and half 
imbecile, sitting under a tattered canopy, 
whom he compassionately saluted as the 
Mughal Emperor. A new rule succeeded in 
India ; a rule under which the too rapid re- 
forms of Akbar, and the too obstinate reaction 
of Aurangzeb, are alike impossible. 

Periods of progress have alternated with 
periods of pause. But the advance has been 
steady towards that consciousness of solidar- 
ity, that enlightenment of the masses^ and 



356 



The Mogul Emperors 



that capacity for political rights, which mark 
the growth of a nation. It was by the aliena- 
tion of the native races that the Mughal 
Empire perished ; it is by the incorporation 
of those races into a loyal and united people 
that the British rule will endure. 

And ye^ that read these Ruines Tragicall, 
Learne, by their losse, to love the low degree; 
And, if that Fortune chaunce you up to call 
To Honour's seat, forget not what you be : 
For he, that of himself is most secure. 
Shall finde his state most fickle and unsure. 




The Conquests of India — Appendix 357 



THE CONQUESTS OF INDIA- 
APPENDIX 

Alexander the Great entered India 327 
B.C., and with his invasion our accurate 
knowledge of the country begins. The 
empire of Chandra-Gupta was formed on the 
remains of Alexander's conquest, and endured 
from 316 to 292 B.C. His grandson, the mild 
and pious Asoka (264-223 B.C.), established 
Buddhism throughout all India, even to 
Ceylon. An Indian embassy was sent to 
Caesar Augustus in Rome (22-20 B.C.), and 
many coins of the reigns of Nero and 
Tiberius have been found buried in India 
in recent times. Buddhism was superseded 
in India at about the period when Muham- 
madanism was rising in Arabia, Muhammad 
died in 632 a.d., and thirty-two years later 
India was invaded by his followers ; and 
again in 71 1 and 977. The great Mahmud 
(977 to loio) conquered the country from 



358 The Mogul Emperors 

Persia to the Ganges, and established an 
empire which lasted till 11 86, when it 
was overthrown by the Afghans of Ghor. 
Muhammad Ghori was assassinated in 1206, 
and one of his slaves, a viceroy, founded 
a dynasty, with its capital at Delhi, which 
existed till 1288. 

The third great conqueror was Allah-ud- 
din-Khilji (i 294-1316), whose successful 
generals (specially Malik Kafur) overran 
even the remotest regions of Southern 
India. A successful revolt (1321) founded 
the Tughlak dynasty, which endured 
till about 1400 A.D. Muhammad Tugh- 
lak, the second of the house, removed 
his capital from Delhi to the Deccan. 
Gradually his subordinate kings threw off 
their allegiance and set up independent 
states. The Afghan kingdoms of Bengal 
date from about 1336. This dismember- 
ment of the country favored the progress 
of the fourth great invader, Timur. 

Timur's invasion was in 1398. After fear- 
ful victories and slaughters, he returned to 
Samarkand, which was the central city of the 



The Conquests of India — Appendix 359 

many petty kingdoms parcelled out to his 
descendants. 

India was left in confusion, ruled by 
Hindu, by Afghan, by Turki kings and 
rajahs, and all at war. Babar, the sixth 
in descent from Timur, invaded India in 
1525, and founded the Mogul Empire, so 
called, which lasted, theoretically at least, 
till the mutiny of 1857. Its real unity and 
power ended with the reign of Aurangzeb in 
1707. 

Babar's was the first conquest of India ; 
all the previous invasions had been mere 
razzias in search of plunder. His son 
Humayun simply succeeded in not losing 
the empire ; his grandson Akbar organized 
and consolidated the Mogul power. The 
son and grandson of Akbar (Jahangir and 
Shah Jahan) ruled over a magnificent and 
fairly homogeneous realm. With Aurang- 
zeb's long reign the solidarity of the empire 
ended forever. 

The principal dates in the period referred 
to in this book are collected in what follows, 
for convenience. In most cases they are 



360 The Mogul Emperors 

simply copied from Sir W. W. Hunter's 
admirable book, The Indian Empire : Its 
People, History, a7id Products (Triibner's 
Oriental Series). 

A.D. 

Irruption of the Moguls under Timur (Tamer- 
lane) 1398-99 

Timur captures Delhi , . 1398 

Babar — sixth in descent from Timur — born 1483 

" becomes king of Ferghana ^494 

" conquers Samarkand i497 

" conquers Kabul 1504 

" invades India 1526 

" dies 1530 

Humayun — Babar's son — succeeds 153° 

" capture of Lahore and occupation of 

the Punjab by his brother Kamran 1530 
" campaigns in Malwa and Guzarat. . . . 1532 

*' defeated by Sher-Shah, the Afghan 

ruler of Bengal ; retreat to Agra... . 1539 
" finally defeated by Sher-Shah; escapes . 
to Persia as an exile ; Sher-Shah as- 
cends the Delhi throne 1540 

*' returns to India ; defeat of the Afghans 

by his young son Akbar ; dies, and 

is succeeded by Akbar 1556 

Akbar — son of Humayun — born at Amarkat in Sind 1542 
'* succeeds to the throne under the regency 

of Bairam Khan. 1556 



The Conqtiests of India — Appendix 361 

A.D. 

Akbar — assumes direct management of the king- 
dom ; quells revolt of Bairam Khan.. . 1560 

" invasion of the Panjab by Akbar's rival 

brother Hakim, who is defeated 1566 

" subjugates the Rajput kingdoms to the 

Mogul Empire 1561-68 

" campaign in Guzerat, and its annexation 

to the empire, 1572-73 

" reconquest of Bengal, which is finally an- 
nexed to the empire 1576 

" insurrection in Guzerat (1581-93) which 

is finally subjugated to the empire 1593 

" conquest of Kashmir 1586 

" conquest of Sind 1592 

" subjugation of Kandahar, and consolida- 
tion of the Mogul Empire over all India 
north of the Vindhya mountains, as far 
as Kabul and Kandahar 1594 

■' unsuccessful campaign of Akbar's son, 

Prince Murad, in the Deccan 1595 

" Akbar's campaign in the Deccan 1599 

" annexation of Khandesh, and return of 

Akbar to Northern India 1601 

" dies at Agra 1605 

Jahangir — succeeds his father Akbar 1605 

*' flight, rebellion, and imprisonment of 

his eldest son Khusru 1606 

*' marries Nur-Mahal 161 1 

" Sir Thomas Roe's embassy arrives at his 

court 1615 



362 The Mogul Emperors 

A.D. 

Jahangir — Kandahar captured by the Persians. ... 162 1 
" Rebellion of Shah Jahan, his son. . . 1623-25 

" Mahabet-Khan seizes the emperor 1626 

" recovers his liberty ; Mahabet-Khan 

and Shah Jahan in rebellion 1627 

" dies 1627 

Shah Jahan — Nur-Mahal imprisoned 1627 

" ascends the throne 1628 

" Afghan uprisings in Northern In- 
dia 1628-30 

" death of his wife M umtaz-i- Mahal . . 1630 

" wars in the Deccan 1629-35 

" Kandahar reconquered by the Moguls 1637 

" temporary invasion of Balkh by the 

Moguls 1645 

" Nur-Mahal dies 1645 

" Balkh abandoned by the Moguls .... 1647 

" Kandahar finally taken and held by 

the Persians 1653 

" war in the Deccan under Aurang- 

zeb 1655-56 

" disputes as to the succession to the 

throne between the four sons of 

Shah Jahan 1657-58 

" dies 1666 

Aurangzeb — deposes Shah Jahan, his father 1658 

" Dara, his brother, executed 1659 

** Shuja, his brother, flies and perishes 

miserably 1660 



The Conquests of India — Appendix 363 

A.D. 

Aurangzeb — Murad, his brother, imprisoned and 

executed 166 1 

Maratha wars, under Sivaji, who 

rebels 1662-65 

war in the Deccan ; defeat of the 

Moguls 1666 

Sivaji makes peace, and obtains 

favorable terms 1667 

Sivaji ravages the Deccan , . . . , 1670 

Sivaji defeats the Mogul army. .... 1672 
the emperor revives the poll-tax on 

non-Muhammadans. 1667 

war with the Rajputs 1679 

Maratha successes in the Deccan 1672-80 
the emperor in person invades the 

Deccan 1683 

guerrilla wars with the Marathas.. 1692 
the Maratha wars ; successes of the 

Moguls 1699-1 701 

the Marathas successful 1702-05 

retreats 1 706 

and dies 1707 



;64 The Mogul Emperors 



A GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF 
THE HOUSE OF TIMUR 

[abridged from professor blochmann's 
ain-i-akbari.] 

I. TiMUR, ^. A.H. 736 (a.d. 1336) ; d. A.H. 807 (a.d. 
1405) ; buried at Samarkand. 

II. Jalaluddin Miran Shah (third son of I.), b. 
A.H. 769 ; d. A.H. 810. 

III. Sultan Muhammad Mirza (sixth son of II.), 
b. -i ; d. 1 . 

IV. Sultan Abusaid Mirza (eldest son of III.), 
A.H. 830 ; d. A.H. 873. 

V. Omar-Shaikh Mirza (fourth son of IV.), b. a.h. 
860 ; d. A.H. 899 (a.d. 1494). 

VI. Babar (eldest son of V.), b. a.h. 888 (a.d. 
1483) ; d. A.H. 937 (a.d. 1530) ; buried at Kabul. 
Babar had two brothers, viz.: 2. Jahangir Mirza. 
3. Nazir Mirza. 

VII. HuMAYUN (eldest son of VI.), b. a.h. 913 (a.d. 
1508) ; d. A.H. 963 (a.d. 1556) ; buried at Delhi. 
HuMAYUN had three brothers, viz.: 2. Kamram 
Mirza. 3. Askari Mirza. 4. Mirza Hindal. 

VIII. Akbar (eldest son of VII.), b. a.h. 949 (a.d. 
1542) ; d. A.H. 1014 (a.d. 1605) ; buried at Agra. 



Genealogical Table — House of Timtir 365 

Akbar had two brothers, viz.: 2, Mirza Muham- 
mad Hakim, King of Kabul. 3. Sultan Ibrahim. 

IX. Jahangir (third son of VIII.), b. a.h. 977 (a.d. 
1569) ; d. A.H. 1037 (a.d. 1627) ; buried 21 Lahore. 
Jahangir had four brothers, viz.: i, 2. Hasan 
and Husain (twins, died in infancy). 4. Sultan 
Murad. 5. Sultan Danyal. 

X. Shah Jahan (third son of IX.), b. a.h. iooo (a.d. 
1591) ; d. A.H. 1076 (a.d. 1666) ; buried at Agra. 
Shah Jahan had four brothers, viz.: i. Sultan 
Khusru. 2. Sultan Parwiz. 4. Jahandar, 
5. Shahryar. 

XI. Aurangzeb (third son of X.), b. a.h. 1027 (a.d. 
1618) ; d. A.H. 1118 (a.d. 1707) ; buried at Daulat- 
abad. Aurangzeb had eight brothers, of whom we 
need only mention : i. Dara Shikoh. 2. Sul- 
tan Shuja. 6. Murad Bakhsh. 



Finis 






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